






War* Ci 






• - 























• • • 



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O • A 




■% 



THE 



BROTHERHOOD OF THIEYES ; 



OR, 

A TRUE PICTUPxE 



OF THE 



AMERICAN CHURCH AND CLERGY 



A LETTER 



TO 



NATHANIEL BARNEY, 



OF NANTUCKET, 



v 
By STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 



CONCORD. N. H : 
PARKER PILLSBURY. 

Single Copies, 25 Cents; Five Copies, One Dollar. 

1886. 



i^xjbijIC^^ti oisrs 



-BY- 



#f /IRKER f ILLSBURY.f* 



ACTS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY APOSTLES, 

By Parker PiLLSBURY. 503 pages. * $i.5( 

THE AMERICAN CHURCHES ; THE BULWARKS O 
AMERICAN SLAVERY, 

By Hon. James G. Birney. Third edition. 48 page; 
Prices: Single, 15 cents; 10 copies, $i.O( 

THE BROTHERPIOOD OF* THIEVES, OR A TRU 
PICTURE OF THE AMERICAN CHURCH AN; 
CLERGY. 

By Stephen S. Foster. 75 pages. 

Prices: Single, 25 cents; 5 copies, $i.0( 

THE CHURCH AS IT IS, OR THE FORLORN HOR 

OF SLAVERY, 

By Parker Pillsbury. 96 pages. 

• Prices: Single, 25 cents; 5 copies, $i.0( 

The three last named, reprints mfac si?ni/e from editior 
of more than forty years ago. All sent by mail on receipt ( 
price. 



THE 



BEOTHEEHOOD OF THIEVES 



OR, 

A TRUE PICTURE 



OF THE 



AMERICAN CHURCH AND CLERGY 



A LETTER 



TO 



NATHANIEL BARNEY, 



1 



OF NANTUCKET, 



By STEPHEN S. FOSTER. 



CONCORD, N. H. : 
parker pillsburt. 

Single Copies, 25 Cents; Five Copies, One Dollar. 

1886. 



INTHODUOTOKY, BY THE PUBLISHER. 



This edition is as near as possible a facsimile of twenty 
stereotype editions, published and distributed forty years 
ago in the heat of the moral and peaceful Anti-Slavery 
conflict, and before the final appeal to bloodshed and 
slaughter by the slaveholders themselves. How well our 
thirty years of peaceful agitation and discussion had en- 
lightened the mind and fired the heart of the Northern 
people against the iniquities and abominations of the slave 
system was mightily shown in the fact that an army of 
more than 2,700,000 men gathered and hurled itself as 
thunderbolts at the RebellioUj crushing it and its blood- 
besmeared idol, Slavery, down to irrecoverable destruc- 
tion ! 

The title-page, to some readers, may seem startling, al- 
most stunning ; — but read the subsequent pages, or one 
half of them, and see whether the book is misnamed- 
and see, too, with what face anybody can now say that 
" The church and clergy of that period abolished slavery ! " 
Yet many at this day do say it. Some even go so far as 
to declare that they could sooner have done it, had not 
Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and their fanatical and infi- 
del discipleship been in their way. 



This little work, and the ^^The American Churches the 
Bulwarks of American Slavery^'" by Hon. James G. Bir- 
ney, and "T/ie Church As It Is, the Forlorn Hope of /Sla- 
very" by Parker Pillsburj'^, are now reproduced by the 
author of the last named, and are for sale by him at Con- 
cord, N. H. 

For prices, see second page of the cover. 

P. P. 
Concord, N. H., 1886. 



LETTER. 



Esteemed Friend : 

In the early part of last aiUumn, I received a letter from you, 
requesting me to prepare an article for the press in vindication 
of the strong language of denunciation of the American church 
and clergy, which I employed at the late Anti-Slavery Conven- 
tion on your island, and which was the occasion of the disgrace- 
ful mob, which disturbed and broke up that meeting. In my an- 
swer, I gave you assurance of prompt compliance with your re- 
quest ; but, for reasons satisfactory to myself, I have failed to 
fulfil my promise up to the present time. The novelty of the 
occasion has now passed away ; the deep and malignant passions 
which were stirred in the bosoms of no inconsiderable portion of 
your people, have, doubtless, subsided ; but the important facts 
connected with it are yet fresh in the memories of all ; and, as 
the occasion was one of general, not local, interest, and the spirit 
which was there exhibited was a fair specimen of the general 
temper and feeling of our country towards the advocates of equal 
rights and impartial justice, I trust it will not be deemed amiss 
in me to make it a subject of public notice, even at this late 
period. 

But in the remarks which I propose to make, it will be no part 
of my object to vindicate myself in the opinion of the public, 
against the foul aspersions of those whose guilty quiet my preach- 
ing may have disturbed. Indeed, to tell the truth, I place a 
very low estimate on the good opinions of ray countrymen — quite 
as low, I think, as they do on mine, if I may judge from their 
very great anxiety to have me speak well of them, which I posi- 
tively never can, so long as their national capital is a human 
flesh-mart, and their chief magistrate is a slave-breeder. The 
most that I can do is to pledge myself never to mob them, nay, 
that I will not even be displeased with them, for speaking ill of 
me, while their character remains what it now is. My oppo- 
nents, among whom rank most of the church and clergy of the 
country, have disturbed a majority of the meetings which I have 



attended, within the last nine months, by drunken, murderous 
mobs, and in several instances, they have inflicted severe injury 
upon my person ; but I value this violence and outrage as proof 
of their deep conviction of the truth and power of what I say. 
I deem the reproach of such men sufficient praise. And I here 
tender them my thanks for the high compliment they have so 
often paid to my opinions, in the extreme measures to which they 
have resorted to compel me to speak in their praise. But so 
long as their character remains such that I can bestow no com- 
mendations, I shall ask none in return. 

Nor is it my intention in this letter, to weaken, by explana- 
tions, the force of my testimony against the popular religion of 
our country, for the purpose of allaying the bloody spirit of per- 
secution which has of late characterized the opposition to my 
course. True, my life is in danger, especially whenever I at- 
tempt to utter my sentiments in houses dedicated to what is 
called the worship of God ; but He who has opened to my view 
other worlds, in which to reap the rewards and honors of a life 
of toil and suffering in the cause of truth and human freedom in 
this, has taught me to "be not afraid of them that kill the body, 
and after that have no more that they can do." Hence I have 
no pacificatory explanations to ojEfer, no coward disclaimers to 
make. But 1 shall aim to present to the comprehension of the 
humblest individual, into whose hands this letter may chance to 
fall, a clear and comprehensive view of the intrinsic moral char- 
acter of that class of our countrymen who claim our respect and 
veneration, as ministers and followers of the Prince of Peace. 
I am charged with having done them great injustice in my public 
lectures, on that and various other occasions. Many of those, 
who make this charge, doubtless, honestly think so. To correct 
their error — to reflect on their minds the light which God has 
kindly shed on mine — to break the spell in which they are now 
held by the sorcery of a designing priesthood, and prove that 
priesthood to be a " Brotherhood of Thieves " and the " Bulwark 
of American Slavery " — is all that I shall aim to do. 

But I ought, perhaps, in justice to those who know nothing 
of my religious sentiments, except from the misrepresentations 
of my enemies, to say, that I have no feelings of personal hostil- 
ity towards any portion of the chua-ch or clergy of our country. 
As children of the same Father, they are endeared to me by the 
holiest of all ties ; and I am as ready to suffer, if need be, in de- 
fence of their rights, as in defence of the rights of the Southern 
slave. My objections to them are purely conscientious. I am a 
firm believer in the Christian religion, and in Jesus, as a divine 
being, who is to be our final Judge. I was born and nurtured 



in the bosom of the church, and for twelve years was among its 
most active members. At the age of twenty-two, I left the al- 
lurements of an active business life, on which I had just entered 
with fair prospects, and, for seven successive years, cloistered 
myself within the walls of our literary institutions, in " a course 
of study preparatory to the ministry." The only object I had in 
view in changing my pursuits, at this advanced period of life, was 
to render myself more useful to the world, by extending the prin- 
ciples of Christianity, as taught and lived out by their great 
Author. In renouncing the priesthood and an organized church, 
and laboring for their overthrow, my object is still the same. I 
entered them on the supposition that they were, what from a child 
I had been taught to regard them, the enclosures of Christ's min- 
isters and flock, and his chosen instrumentalities for extending 
his kingdom on the earth. I have left them from an unresistible 
conviction, in spite of my early prejudices, that they are a " hold 
of every foul spirit, '^ and the devices of men to gain influence 
and power. And, in rebuking their adherents as I do, my only 
object is to awaken them, if possible, to a sense of their guilt and 
moral degradation, and bring them to repentance, and a knowl- 
edge of the true God, of whom most of them are now lamentably 
ignorant, as their lives clearly prove. 

The remarks which I made at your Convention were of a most 
grave and startling character. They strike at the very founda- 
tion of all our popular ecclesiastical institutions, and exhibit them 
to the world as the apologists and supporters of the most atro- 
cious system of oppression and wrong, beneath which humanity 
has ever groaned. They reflect on the church the deepest pos- 
sible odium, by disclosing to public view the chains and hand- 
cuffs, the whips and branding-irons, the rifles and bloodhounds, 
with which her ministers and deacons bind the limbs and lacerate 
the flesh of innocent men and defenceless women. They cast up- 
on the clergy the same dark shade which Jesus threw over the 
ministers of his day, when he tore away the veil beneath which 
they had successfully concealed their diabolical schemes of per- 
sonal aggrandizement and power, and denounced them before 
all the people, as a "den of thieves," as "fools and blind," 
" whited sepulchres," "blind guides, which strain at a gnat, 
and swallow a camel," "hypocrites, who devour widows' houses, 
and for a pretence make long prayers," " liars," " adulterers," 
" serpents," " a generation of vipers," who could not "escape the 
damnation of hell." But, appalling and ominous as they were, I 
am not aware that I gave the parties accused, or their mobocratic 
friends, any just cause of complaint. They were all spoken in 
public, in a free meeting, where all who dissented from me were 



8 

not only invited, but warmly urged, to reply. I was an entire 
stranger among you, with nothing but the naked truth and a few 
sympathizing friends to sustain me, while the whole weight of 
popular sentiment was in their favor. Was the controversy un- 
equal on their part? Were they afraid to meet me with the same 
honorable weapons which I had chosen ? Conscious innocence 
seldom consents to tarnish its character by a dishonorable de- 
fence. Had my charges been unfounded, a refutation of them, 
under the circumstances, would have been most easy and tri- 
umphant. My opponents, had they been innocent, could have ac- 
quitted themselves honorably, and overwhelmed their accuser in 
deep disgrace, without the necessity of resorting to those argu- 
ments which appeal only to one's fears of personal harm, and 
which are certain to react upon their authors, when the threaten- 
ing danger subsides. 

But if all that I have alleged against them be true, is was ob- 
viously my right, nay, my imperative duty, to make the disclos- 
ures which I did, even though it might be, as you well know it 
was, at the peril of my life, and the lives of my associates. 

In exposing the deep and fathomless abominations of those 
pious thieves, who gain their livelihood by preaching sermons 
and stealing babies, I am not at liberty to yield to any intimida- 
tions, however imposing the source from whence they come. 
The right of speech — the liberty to utter our own convictions 
freely, at all times and in all places, at discretion, unawed by 
fear, unembarrassed by force — is the gift of God to every mem- 
ber of the family of man, and should be preserved inviolate ; and 
for one, I can consent to surrender it to no power on earth, but 
with the loss of life itself. Let not the petty tyrants of our 
land, in church or state, think to escape the censures which their 
crimes deserve, by hedging themselves about with- the frightful 
penalties of human law, or the more frightful violence of a drunken 
and murderous mob. There live the men who are not afraid to 
die, even though called to meet their fate within the gloomy walls 
of a dismal prison, with no kind hand to wipe the cold death- 
sweat from their sinking brow ; and they scorn a fetter on limb 
' or sjyir'it. They know their rights, and know how to defend 
them, or to obtain more than an equivalent for their loss, in the 
rewards of a martyr to the right. While life remains, they will 
speak, and speak freely, though it be in "A Voice from the 
Jail ;" nor will they treat the crimes and vices of slave-breeding 
priests, and their consecrated abettors of the North, with less 
severity than they do the crimes and vices of other marauders on 
their neighbors' property and rights. Nor should the friends of 
freedom be alarmed at the consequences of this faithful dealing 



with "spiritual wickedness in high places." The mobs which it 
creates are but the violent contortions of the patient, as the deep 
gashes of the operator's knife sever the infected limb from his 
sickly and emaciated body. 

The fact that my charges against the religious sects of our 
country were met with violence and outrage, instead of sound 
arguments and invalidating testimony, is strong presumptive evi- 
dence of their truth. The innocent never find occasion to resort 
to this disgraceful mode of defence. If our clergy and church 
were the ministers and church of Christ, would their reputation 
be defended by drunken and murderous mobs V Are brickbats 
and rotten eggs the weapons of truth and Christianity ? Did 
Jesus say to his disciples, "Blessed are ye when the moh shall 
speak well of you, and shall defend you ? " The church, slavery, 
and the mob, are a queer trinity ! And yet that they are a 
trinity — that they all ' ' agree in one " — cannot be denied. Every 
assault which we have made on the bloody slave system, as I 
shall hereafter show, has been promptly met and repelled by the 
church, which is herself the claimant of several hundred thousand 
slaves ; and whenever we have attempted to expose the guilt 
and hypocrisy of the church, the moh has uniformly been first 
and foremost in her defense. But I rest not on presumptive evi- 
dence, however strong and conclusive, to sustain my allegations 
against the American church and clergy. The proof of their 
identity with slavery, and of their consequent deep and unpar- 
alleled criminality, is positive and overwhelming, and is fully ade- 
quate to sustain the gravest charges, and to justify the most de- 
nunciatory language that has ever fallen from the lips of their 
most inveterate opponents. 

I said at your meeting, among other things, that the Ameri- 
can church and clergy, as a body, were thieves, adulterers, man- 
stealers, pirates, and murderers ; that the Methodist Episcopal 
church was more corrupt and profligate than any house of ill-fame 
in the city of New York; that the Southern ministers of that 
body were desirous of perpetuating slavery for the purpose of 
supplying themselves with concubines fi'om among its hapless vic- 
tims ; and that many of our clergymen were guilty of enormities 
that would disgrace an Algerine pirate ! ! These sentiments 
called forth a burst of holy indignation from the pious and duti- 
ful advocates of the church and clergy, which overwhelmed the 
meeting with repeated showers of stones and rotten eggs, and 
eventually compelled me to leave your island, to prevent the 
shedding of human blood. But whence this violence and per- 
sonal abuse, not only of the author of these obnoxious senti- 
ments, but also of your own unoffending wives and daughters, 
1* 



10 

whose faces and dresses, you will recollect, were covered with 
the most loathsome filth ? It is reported of the ancient Phari- 
sees and their adherents, that they stoned Stephen to death for 
preaching doctrines at war with the popular religion of their 
times, and charging them with murder of the Son of God ; but 
their successors of the modern church, it would seem, have dis- 
covered some new principle in theology, by which it is made 
their duty not only to stone the heretic himself, but all those al- 
so who may at any time be found listening to his discourse with- 
out a permit from their priest. Truly, the church is becoming 
" terrible as an army with banners." 

This violence and outrage on the part of the church were, no 
doubt, committed to the glory of God and the honor of religion, 
although the connection between rotten eggs and holiness of 
heart is not very obvious. It is, I suppose, one of the mysteries 
of religion which laymen cannot understand without the aid of 
the clergy ; and I therefore suggest that the pulpit make it a sub- 
ject of Sunday discourse. But are not the charges here alleged 
against the clergy strictly and literally true ? I maintain that 
they are true to the very letter ; that the clergy and their ad- 
herents are literally, and beyond all controversy, a "brother- 
hood of thieves ; '' and, in support of this opinion, I submit the 
following considerations : — 

You will agree with me, I think, that slaveholding involves the 
commission of all the crimes specified in my first charge, viz., 
theft, adultery, man-stealing, piracy, and murder. But should 
you have any doubts on this subject, they will be easily removed 
by analyzing this atrocious outrage on the laws of God, and the 
rights and happiness of man, and examining separately the ele- 
ments of which it is composed. Wesley, the celebrated founder 
of the Methodists, once denounced it as the "sum of all villa- 
nies." Whether it be the sum of ali villanies, or not, I will not 
here express an opinion ; but that it is the sum of at least five, 
and those by no means the least atrocious in the catalogue of 
human aberrations, will require but a small tax on your patience 
to prove. 

1. Theft. To steal, is to take that which belongs to another, 
without his consent. Theft and robbery are, morally, the same 
act, different only in form. Both are included under the com- 
mand, " Thou shalt not steal; " that is, thou shalt not take thy 
neighbor's property. Whoever, therefore, either secretly or by 
force, possesses himself of the property of another, is a thief. 
Now, no proposition is plainer than that every man owns his own 
industry. He who tills the soil has a right to its products, and 
cannot be deprived of them but by an act of felony. This prin- 



11 

ciple furnishes the only solid basis for the right of private or in- 
dividual property ; and he who denies it, either in theory or prac- 
tice, denies that right, also. But every slaveholder takes the en- 
tire industry of his slaves, from infancy to gray hairs ; they dig 
the soil, but he receives its products. No matter how kind or 
humane the master may be, — he lives by plunder. He is em- 
phatically a freebooter; and, as such, he is as much more despi- 
cable a character than the common horse-thief, as his depredations 
are more extensive, 

2. Adultery. This crime is disregard for the requisitions of 
marriage. The conjugal relation has its foundation deeph' laid 
in man's nature, and its strict observance is essential to his hap- 
piness. Hence Jesus Christ has thrown around it the sacred 
sanction of his written law, and expressly declared that the man 
who violates it, even by a lustful eye, is an adulterer. But does 
the slaveholder respect this sacred relation ? Is he cautious 
never to tread upon forbidden ground ? No ! His very posi- 
tion makes him the minister of unbridled lust. By converting 
woman into a commodity to be bought and sold, and used by her 
cUimant as his avarice or lust may dictate, he totally annihilates 
the marriage institution, and transforms the wife into what he 
very significantly terms a " Brep:der,'' and her children into 
"Stock.'' 

This change in woman's condition, from a free moral agent to 
a chattel, places her domestic relations entirely beyond her own 
control, and makes her a mere instrument for the gratification 
of another's desires. The master claims her body as his prop- 
erty, and, of course, employs it for such purposes as best suit his 
inclinations, — demanding free access to her bed ; nor can she re- 
sist his demands but at the peril of her life. Thus is her chas- 
tity left entirely unprotected, and she is made the lawful prey of 
every pale-faced libertine who may choose to prostitute her ! 
To place woman in this situation, or to retain her in it when 
placed there by another, is the highest insult that any one could 
possibly offer to the dignity and purity of her nature ; and the 
wretch who is guilty of it deserves an epithet compared with 
which adultery is spotless innocence. Rape is his crime ! death 
his desert, — if death be ever due to criminals ! Am I too se- 
vere? Let the offence be done to a sister or daughter of yours ; 
nay, let the Rev. Dr. Witherspoon, or some other ordained mis- 
creant from the South, lay his vile hands on your own bosom com- 
panion, and do to her what he has done to the companion of an- 
other, — and what Prof. Stuart and Dr. Fisk say he may do, 
"without violating the Christian faith," — and I fear not your re- 
ply. None but a moral monster ever consented to the enslave- 



12 

ment of his own daughter, and none but fiends incarnate ever 
enslave the daughter of another. Indeed, I think the demons in 
hell would be ashamed to do to their fellow-demons what many 
of our clergy do to their own church members. 

3 Man-stealing. What is it to steal a man ? Is it not to 
claim him as your property ? — to call him yours ? God has given 
to every man an inalienable right to himself, — a right of which 
no conceivable circumstance of birth, or forms of law, can divest 
him ; and he who interferes with the free and unrestricted exer- 
cise of that right, who, not content with the proprietorship of 
his own body, claims the body of his neighbor, is a man-stealer. 
This truth is self-evident. Every man, idiots and the insane on- 
ly excepted, knows that he has no possible right to another's 
body ; and he who persists, for a moment, in claiming it, incurs 
the guilt of man-stealing. The plea of the slave-claimant, that 
he has bought, or inherited, his slaves, is of no avail. What 
right had he, I ask, to purchase, or to inherit, his neighbors ? 
The purchase, or inheritance of them as a legacy, was itself a 
crime of no less enormity than the original act of kidnapping. 
But every slave-holder, whatever his profession or standing in 
society may be, lays his felonious hands on the body and soul of 
his equal brother, robs him of himself, converts him into an arti- 
cle of merchandise, and leaves him a mere chattel personal in 
the hands of his claimants. Hence he is a kidnapper, or man- 
thief. 

4. Piracy. The American people, by an act of solemn legis- 
lation, have declared the enslaving of human beings on the coast 
of Africa to be piracy, and have affixed to this crime the penalty 
of death. And can the same act be piracy in Africa, and not be 
piracy in America ? Does crime change its character by chang- 
ing longitude ? Is killing, with malice aforethought, no murder, 
where there is no human enactment against it ? Or can it be 
less piratical and Heaven-daring to enslave our own native coun- 
trymen, than to enslave the heathen sons of a foreign and barba- 
rous realm ? If there be any difference in the two crimes, the 
odds is in favor of the foreign enslaver. Slaveholding loses 
none of its enormity by a voyage across the Atlantic, nor by bap- 
tism into the Christian name. It is piracy in Africa ; it is pira- 
cy in America ; it is piracy the wide world over ; and the Ameri- 
can slaveholder, though he possess all the sanctity of the ancient 
Pharisees, and make prayers as numerous and long, is a pirate 
still; a base, profligate adulterer, and wicked contemner of the 
holy institution of marriage ; identical in moral character with 
the African slave-trader, and guilty of a crime which, if commit- 
ted on a foreign coast, he must expiate on the gallows. 



13 

5. Murder. Murder is an act of the mind, and not of the 
hand. "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer." A man 
may kill, — that is his hand may inflict a mortal blow, — without 
committing murder. On the other hand, he may commit murder 
without actually taking life. The intention constitutes the crime. 
He who, with a pistol at my breast, demands my pocket-book or 
my life, is a murderer, whichever I may choose to part with. 
And is not he a murderer, who, with the same deadly weapon, 
demands the surrender of what to me is of infinitely more value 
than my pocket-book, nay, than life itself — my liberty — myself — 
my wife and children — all that I possess on earth, or can hope 
for in heaven ? But this is the crime of which every slaveholder 
is guilty. He maintains his ascendency over his victims, extort- 
ing their unrequited labor, and sundering the dearest ties of kin- 
dred, only by the threat of extermination. With the slave, as 
every intelligent person knows, there is no alternative. It is 
submission or death, or, more frequently, protracted torture more 
horrible than death. Indeed, the South never sleeps, but on 
dirks, and pistols, and bowic knives, with a troop of blood- 
hounds standing sentry at every door ! What, I ask, means this 
splendid enginery of death, which gilds the palace of the tyrant 
master? It tells the story of his guilt. The burnished steel 
which waits beneath his slumbering pillow, to drink the life-blood 
of outraged ionocence, brands him as a murderer. It proves, 
beyond dispute, that the submission of his victims is the only 
reason why he has not already shed their blood. 

By this brief analysis of slavery, we stamp upon the forehead 
of the slaveholder, with a brand deeper than that which marks 
the victim of his wrongs, the infamy of theft, adultery, man-steal- 
ing, piracy, and murder. We demonstrate, beyond the possi- 
bility of doubt, that he who enslaves another — that is, robs him 
of his right to himself, to his own hands, and head, and feet, and 
transforms him from a free moral agent into a mere bride, to 
obey, not the commands of God, but his claimant — is guilty of 
everyone of these atrocious crimes. And in doing this, we have 
only demonstrated what, to every reflecting mind, is self-evident. 
Every man, if he would but make the case of the slave his own, 
would feel in his inmost soul the truth and justice of this charge. 
But these are the crimes which I have alleged against the Ameri- 
can church and clergy. Hence, to sustain my charge against 
them, it only remains for me to show that they are slaveholders. 
That they are slaveholders — party to a conspiracy against the 
liberty of more than two millions of our countrymen, and as such, 
are guilty of the crimes of which they stand accused — I affirm, 
and will now proceed to prove. 



14 

It may be necessary for me first, however, to show what con- 
stitutes slaveholding, as there seems to be no little confusion in 
the minds of many on this point. And here let me say, the word 
itself, if analyzed, will give an accurate description of the act. 
It is to hold one in slavery — to keep him in the condition of a 
chattel. But slaveholding, in all cases, is necessarily a social 
crime. A man may commit theft or murder alone, but no single 
individual can ever enslave another. It is only when several per- 
sons associate together, and combine their influence against the 
liberty of an individual, that he can be deprived of his freedom, 
and reduced to slavery. Hence connection with an association, 
any part of whose object is to hold men in slavery, constitutes 
one a slaveholder. Nor is the nature or criminality of his offence 
altered or affected by the number of persons connected with him 
in such an association. If a million of people conspired together 
to enslave a solitary individual, each of them is a slaveholder, 
and no less guilty than if he were alone in the crime. It is no 
palliation of his offence to say, that he is opposed to slavery. 
The better feelings of every slaveholder are opposed to slavery. 
But if he be opposed to it, why, I ask, is he concerned in it ? 
Why does he countenance, aid, or abet, the infernal system? 
The fact of his opposition to it, in feeling, instead of mitigating 
his guilt, only enhances it, since it proves, conclusively, that he 
is not unconscious of the wrong he is doing. 

It is a common but mistaken opinion, that, to constitute one a 
slaveholder, he must be the claimant of slaves. That title be- 
longs alike to the slave-claimant, and all those who, by their 
countenance or otherwise, lend their influence to support the slave 
system. If I aid or countenance another in stealing, 1 am a 
thief, though he receive all the booty. The Knapps, it will be 
recollected, were hung as the murderers of IMr. White, though 
Crowninshield gave the fatal blow, and that, too, while they were 
at a distance from the bloody scene. It matters little who does 
the mastery, and puts on the drag-chain and hand-cuffs, whether 
it be James B. Gray, the Boston Police, Judge Story, or some 
distinguished Doctor of Divinity of the South ; the guilt of the 
transaction consists in authorizing or allowing it to be done. 
Hence all who, through their political or ecclesiastical connec- 
tions, aid or countenance the master in his work of death, are 
slaveholders, and, as such, are stained with all the moral turpi- 
tude which attaches to the man who, by their sanction, wields 
the bloody lash over the heads of his trembling victims, and 
buries it deep in their quivering flesh. Nay, the human hounds 
which guard the plantation, ever eager to bark on the track of 
the flying fugitive, are objects of deeper indignation and abhor- 
rence than even its lordly proprietor. 



15 

How stands this matter, then, in regard to the American 
church and clergy ? Is it true of them that they are either claim- 
ants of slaves or loatch-dogs of the plantation ? Such, I regret to 
say, is the shameful and humilitating fact. It is undeniably 
true, that, with comparatively few exceptions, they occupy one 
of these two positions in relation to the "• peculiar institution." 
Thousands of the ministers, and tens of thousands of the mem- 
bers of the difiEerent sects, are actually claimants of slaves. 
They buy and sell, mortgage and lease, their own " brethren in 
the Lord,'' not unfrequently breaking up families, and scattering 
their bleeding fragments over all the land, never to be gathered 
again till the archangel's trump shall wake their slumbering 
ashes into life. In confirmation of this statement, if proof be 
asked, I submit the following testimony of Rev. Samuel Heus- 
ton, late of Utica, N. Y., an accredited minister of the Metho- 
dist Episcopal church, who formerly resided at the South. In 
reply to several questions by Rev. George Storrs, of the same 
church, Mr. H. says, — 

" I know that members of the M. E. church sell slaves at auc- 
tion, to the highest bidder ; and it is not considered a disciplin- 
ary offence, 1 know of Methodist preachers buying slaves with 
no apparent design to better their condition, but evidently for the 
sake of gain. 

'>I should think nearly one half, at least, of the ministers of 
our church hold shives and trade in them ; and nearly all the 
members, who are able to own slaves, not only hold them, but 
buy and sell them. 

" I know an official member of the M. E. church. Col. , 

that bought in one purchase about fifty thousand dollars' worth 
of slaves. 

"Esq. , of , S. C, an official member of the M. 

E. church, who made it a business to buy and sell slaves in lots 
to suit the purchasers, has became rich by his speculation in them, 
and still continues his trade in human beings — trading not only 
for himself, but as an agent for others. His house is head-quarters 
for Methodists — a home for the preachers. He is a chief man in 
the church; very benevolent.''^ 

The opinion of Mr. Heuston as to the extent to which the 
Methodists are engaged in breeding and traflicking in slaves, is 
corroborated by the testimony of Rev. James Smylie, a Presby- 
terian clergyman of Mississippi, who affirms the same thing of all 
the other large denominations. In a pamphlet which he pub- 
lished in defence of slavery, in 1838, I think it was, we find the 
following passage : — 



16 

" If slavery be a sin, and advertising and apprehending slaves 
with a view to restore them to their masters, is a direct violation 
of the divine law, and if the buying, selling, o?' holding a slave, 
FOR THE SAKE OF GAIN, is a heinous sin and scandal, then, ver- 
ily, THREE FOURTHS OF ALL THE EPISCOPALIANS, METHODISTS, 

Baptists, and Presbyterians, in eleven states of the 
Union, are of the devil. They ' hold,' if they do not buy and 
sell slaves, and, with few exceptions, they hesitate not to ' appre- 
hend and restore ' runaway slaves when in their power." 

The statements of these individuals apply to the South only. 
It is only in that portion of the country that Mr. S. says, and 
says truly, that if slavery be a sin (and no man doubts that it is), 
three fourths of all the Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, and 
Presbyterians are of the devil. But as the Northern branch of 
the church is much larger than the Southern, a large majority of 
the ministers and church members of the whole country hold no 
property in slaves. But while it is true they are not claimants 
of slaves, it is equally true that they are the apologists and sup- 
porters of the system. For the sake of union with the South, 
the Northern church and clergy, in concert with non-professors, 
have made their respective states hunting-grounds for Southern 
kidnappers, and themselves the hounds. They have covenanted 
with the South that whenever one of her slaves shall make his 
escape to Massachusetts, Judge Story and the United States 
marshal, with his jDosse comitatus, shall dog him down, secure 
his person, and in due time deliver him up to the original kid- 
napper. Nor is this all. They have consented to become the 
body-guard of the slave-master, and have pledged themselves to 
protect him against every attempt of his slaves to throw off their 
chains. 

It is to this union and pledge of protection from the North, that 
the slave system owes its perpetuity to the present time. Such, 
at least, is the opinion of the slave-claimants themselves. Hence 
they shriek out in dismay at the first proposition of the abolition- 
ists to dissolve the Union, and leave them alone in the enjoy- 
ment of their peculiar institutions. Such, too, is the opinion of 
every man of sense who knows anything of the past history or 
present condition of our slave population. The North, as he very 
well knows, are emphatically the sliwe-holders. They are the 
soldiers who level the musket, as the South gives the word of com- 
mand. Indeed, to satisfy himself of this, the humblest and most 
uninformed of our citizens needs but little reflection on the facts 
already within his knowledge. Who does not knoAv that in this 
country are two and a half millions of people who are doomed to 
a state of "bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more 



17 

misery than ages of that which our fathers rose in rebellion to 
oppose "? Confederated with them are not less than half a mill- 
ion of abolitionists, and free people of color, who believe in the 
right and duty of self-defence, and who are ready to join in every 
feasible measure to secure their liberty. Now I ask by whose 
agency this vast people are kept in their present horrible condi- 
tion. To say that they are held by their claimants, would be to 
talk like one bereft of his reason. They are but a mere handful 
of men, at most, less than three hundred thousand, or, on an 
average, about one to every ten slaves. From this vast inequality 
in numbers it is certain that their masters are not alone con- 
cerned in their enslavement. To keep a million of robust, ath- 
letic men and women in a state of abject servitude, requires a 
force far beyond what they are competent to furnish. Whence, 
then, comes that force? Who are the allies and abettors of these 
horrible tyrants, who live upon the blighted hopes of prostrate 
millions ? Are they the crowned despots of the old world ? 
Have Algiers and Constantinople disgorged themselves, and sent 
forth swarms of troops to form a living, impregnable bulwark 
around these execrable monsters, and shield them from the right- 
eous indignation of outraged humanity? The South herself shall 
answer this question. She shall speak, and disclose her accom- 
plices in this work of death. 

Says the editor of the Maryville (Tenn.) Intelligencer^ in an 
article on the character and condition of the slave population, — 

"We of the South are emphatically surrounded by a danger- 
ous class of beings, — degraded, stupid savages, — who, if they 
could but once entertain the idea that immediate and uncondi- 
tional death would not be their portion, would react the St. 
Domingo tragedy. But the consciousness, with all their stupid- 
ity, that a tenfold force, superior in discipline if not in barbarity, 
would gather from the four corners of the United States, and 
slaughter them, keeps them in subjection. But to the non-slave- 
holding states, 'particularly, we are indebted for a -perynanent safe- 
guard against ins^wrection. Without their assistance, the white 
population of the South would be too weak to quiet that innate 
desire for liberty which is ever ready to act itself out with every 
rational creature." 

In a debate in Congress on the resolution to censure John 
Quincy Adams for presenting a petition for the dissolution of 
the Union, Mr. Underwood of Kentucky made the following 
very just confession — a confession which concedes all that I have 
ever claimed in regard to the guilt of the North, and which the 
church and the clergy must disprove, or admit all that I have 



18 

alleged against them. In speaking of the effect of a repeal of 
the Union on slavery, Mr. O. said, — 

"They (the youth) were the weaker portion, were in the minor- 
ity. The North could do what they pleased with thern ; they 
could adopt their own measures. All he asked ~was, that they 
would let the South know what those measures were. One thing 
he knew well — that the state which he in part represented, had 
perhaps a deeper interest in this subject than any other, except 
Maryland and a small portion of Virginia. And why ? Because 
he knew that to dissolve the Union* and separate the different 
states composing this confederacy, — making the Ohio river, and 
Mason and Dixon's line, the boundary line, — he knew as soon as 
that was done, slavery was done, in Kentucky, Maryland, and a 
large portion of Virginia, and it would extend to all the states 
south of this line. The dissolution of the Union was the dissolu- 
tion of slavery. It had been the common practice for Southern 
men to get up on this floor, and say, ' Touch this subject, and we 
will dissolve this Union as a remedy.' Their remedy was the 
destruction of the thing which they wished to save, and any sen-' 
sible man could see it. If the Union were dissolved into two 
parts, the slave would cross the line, and then turn round and 
curse his master from the other shore." 

This confession of Mr. Underwood, as to the entire depend- 
ence of the slave masters on the citizens of the nominally free 
states to guard their plantations and secure them against deser- 
tion, is substantially confirmed by Thomas D. Arnold, of Tennes- 
see, who, in a speech on the same subject, assures us that they 
are equally dependent on the North for personal protection 
against their slaves. In assigning his reasons for adhering to the 
Union, Mr. Arnold makes use of the following remarkable lan- 
guage : 

"The free states had now a majority of 44 in that house. Un- 
der the new census they would have 53 The cause of the slave- 
holding states was getting weaker and weaker, and what were 
they to do? He would ask his Southern friends what the South had 
to rely on, if the Union were dissolved ? Suppt)se the dissolution 
could be peaceably effected (if that did not involve a contradiction 
of terms), what had the South to depend upon ? All the crowned 
heads were against her. A 7nillion of slaves tvere ready to rise and 
strike for freedom at the Jirst tap of the drum. They were cut 
loose from their friends at the North (friends they ought to be, 
and without them the South had no friends), whither were they to 
look for iwotection ? How were they to sustain an assault from 
England, or France, with that cancer at their vitals ? The more 



19 

the South reflected, the more clearly she must see that she had a 
deep and vital interest in maintaining the Union." 

Testimony to the same effect might be multiplied to an in- 
definite extent. But more in unnecessary. Every person, ac- 
quainted with the politics of the country, knows that slavery is 
incorporated into the constitution of our government, and is made 
a part of its settled policy. I have already said that slavehold- 
ing was, necessarily, a social crime; that it was only by means 
of a social organization, by which the power of a whole commu- 
nity could be combined and concentrated on a given point, at a 
given time, that the liberty of an individual could be crushed. 
The federal and state governments, linked together as they now 
are, constitute such an organization. The protection of the slave 
system was one of the objects for which the Union was formed, 
By the terms of the federal compact, the citizens of every state 
in the Union are requii-ed and pledged to protect the slave claim- 
ants, in each of the states where slavery exists, against any at- 
tempt of their slaves to regain their liberty by a resort to arms. 
The army, the navy, and the militia, of the whole country, are 
placed at the bidding of the slave power ; and every officer in 
them, from the highest to the lowest, is put under oath to fight 
the battles of slavery at the master's call. Already have the 
United States troops been twice employed (at South Hampton, 
Va., and at Wilmington, N. C), to suppress insurrection among 
the slaves ; and a call is now made upon the country for a large 
increase of the navy, for the better protection of the " peculiar 
institution.'' The Florida Avar also furnishes another and more 
recent instance in which the nation, as such, has unsheathed the 
sword in defence of slavery. The sole object of that war, which 
has cost the country more than 7000 lives, and exhausted its 
treasury of $40,000,000, be it remembered, was the recapture 
of fugitive slaves, and to prevent further escapes. And the same 
mighty influence which has exterminated the poor Indian in the 
everglades of Florida for makino; his rude wio;wam a refuo^e and 
home for the panting fugitive, is now waiting to " gather in ten- 
fold force from the four corners of the United States, and 
slaughter " the pining bondmen of the South, should they attempt 
to throw off their chains, and assert their right to liberty. 

The guaranty of personal security against their slaves, given 
by the North to the slave-claimants, is the very life-blood of the 
slave system. Divested of the protection of Northern bayonets, 
the slave power could not sustain itself a single hour, as the 
South herself is forced to admit. " Suppose the Union to be dis- 
solved, what has the South to depend upon ? All the crowned 



20 

heads are against her. A million of slaves are ready to rise and 
strike for freedom at the first tap of the drum." And why, I 
ask, do they not now rise ? Not, surely, because, in a country 
like ours, such a step would be deemed morally wrong. The 
doctrine taught in all our pulpits, and received by the church 
universally, is, that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." 
Our clergy tell us that self-defence, and the protection of our 
families, is a duty which we may not innocently neglect, while 
they denounce non-resistance as the " doctrine of devils." Why, 
then, do not the slaves assert their freedom, and meet the invad- 
ers of their rights in mortal combat, as our fathers did ? Why 
is not Madison Washington, George Washington ? And why are 
not Charles Remond and Frederic Douglas and Lundsford Lane, 
the Henrys and Hancocks and Adamses of a second American 
Revolution ? 

But one answer can be given to this question, and that is the 
one already given by the Maryville Intelligencer. The conscious- 
ness that, in a controversy with their masters, they must meet 
the combined forces, military and naval, of the whole country, 
alone deters them from such a movement. It is not the lily- 
fingered aristocracy of the South that they fear, as the South her- 
self tells us, but the " white slaves" of the North, who have 
basely sold themselves for scullions to the slave power, and who 
are always ready to do the bidding of their haughty proprietors, 
whatever service they may require at their hands. The slaves 
know too well, that, should they unfurl the banner of freedom, 
and demand the recognition of their liberty and rights at the 
point of the bayonet, the Northern pulpit, aghast with holy hor- 
ror at the incendiary measure, would raise the maddening cry of 
insurrection — the Nortliern church, animated by a kindred spirit, 
and echoing the infamous libel, would pour forth her sons in 
countless hordes, and a mighty avalanche of Nortliern soldiery, 
well disciplined for their work of death by long experience in 
Northern mobs, would rush down upon them from our Northern 
hills in exterminating wrath, and sweep away, in its desolating 
ruins, the last vestige of their present "forlorn hope!" Do I 
misrepresent the church and clergy? No ! You, at least, know 
that this would be but to redeem their plighted faith. They stand 
before the world and before high Heaven sworn to protect every 
slave-breeder in the land in his lawful business of rearing men 
and women for the market ; nor have they, as a body, ever shown 
any symptoms of intention to violate the requirements of their 
oath. They preach and practice allegiance to a government 
which is based upon the bones and sinews, and cemented with 
the blood, of millions of their countrymen, and hold themselves 



21 

• 

in readiness to execute its every decree, at the point of the bay- 
onet. Thus emphatically are they the holders of the slaves — the 
bulwarks of the bloody slave system — and as such, at their hands, 
if there be any truth in Christianity, will God require the blood 
of every slave in our land. And, for one, so long as they con- 
tinue in their present position,! deem it the duty of every friend 
of humanity to brand them as a Brotherhood of thieves, adulter- 
ers, man-stealers, pirates, and murderers, and to prove to the 
world that, in sustaining the slave system, they do actually com- 
mit all these atrocious crimes. 

The Federal Compact contains another provision, as I have 
already intimated, which, in its operation, is no less fatal to the 
liberties of our enslaved countrymen than that which we have 
just considered ; and one which implicates every friend and sup- 
porter of the Union in all the guilt and moral turpitude of slave- 
holding. I refer to that article of the Constitution which re- 
quires the surrender of fugitive slaves. If the Northern States 
were really free, the slaves would forthwith escape into them, 
and slavery would soon become extinct by emigration, as Mr. 
Underwood has well said. But what is now the fact? Is there 
liberty for the slave anywhere within the borders of the United 
States ? When he steps upon the soil of Pennsylvania, or New 
York, or Massachusetts, do his shackles fall? Can he stand 
erect, and say, " I am free?" No! He is still a crouching 
slave — still clanks his chains, and starts affrighted at the crack 
of the driver's whip. Hotly pursued by the human hounds, 
which, like the fabled vulture of Prometheus, have long gorged 
themselves upon his vitals, he reaches forth his imploring hands 
to the professed ministers and followers of the meek and loving 
Saviour, and, with looks that would draw tears from adamant, 
beseeches them by all that is endearing in the ties of our com- 
mon nature, and by all that is horrible in the doom of a recap- 
tured slave, to save him from the fangs of these terrible mon- 
sters. But what is their reply ? "Go back" — shame, shame on 
the church! — " Go back, and wear your chains ! True, ' all men 
are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain 
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit 
of happiness ;' and God said ' Thou shalt not deliver to his mas- 
ter the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee ' — 
but — but — but we have covenanted with the wretches who have 
robbed you of these rights, never to give you shelter, nor pro- 
tection ; but to return you, if found within our borders, again 
into their power !" 

This is no picture of the fancy, as thousands of our unhappy 
countrymen would testify from sad experience, if they could but 



22 

speak. Indeed, it is the language of every citizen of the North 
who holds any other relation to the Federal Compact than that 
which George Washington and the first American Congress held 
to the colonial edicts of George III ; for that instrument, as inter- 
preted by the Supreme Court, pledges all who assent to it to 
withhold protection from every man who is claimed as a fugitive 
slave, and alloAv him to be dragged [back into bondage. But 
have the Northern church and clergy ever refused to fulfil the 
requisitions of this infamous compact with Southern man-steal- 
ers? Have they trampled its provisions under their feet, and 
indignantly demanded its repeal ? Never ! On the contrary, 
with comparatively few exceptions, they have ranged themselves 
in one of the two great political parties which have long vied with 
each other in their support of slavery, and at the same time have 
waged an exterminating warfare against every movement in favor 
of universal freedom. In connection with these parties, they 
have kidnapped and returned into slavery vast numbers of those 
who, at different periods, had been so fortunate as to escape from 
the power of their masters ; and in more instances than one have 
they indicted and imprisoned abolitionists for giving them suc- 
cor. Thus have the church and clergy of the North voluntarily 
consented to become the watch-dogs of the plantation ; and from 
long and intimate acquaintance with their fidelity in this service, 
I have no hesitation in recommending them to their Southern 
masters as worthy candidates for the honors of a br-ass collar. 
And if I were to specify cases of extraordinary merit in this re- 
gard, I should name Chief Justice Shaw and Judge Story, and 
the clergy generally of the city of Boston, as especially entitled 
to remembrance by James B. Gray, for their prompt and cordial 
acquiescence in his recent claim of George Latimer. It would 
be but an act of justice in Mr. G. to expend a part of the money 
for which he sold George in collars, inscribed with the initials of 
his own name, for these distinguished kidnappers. Their con- 
duct on that occasion, as I can testify from personal observation, 
richly entitles them to some such lasting memento of their loyalty 
to the slave power. 

There is another view of this subject, which presents the guilt 
of the Northern church and clergy in a still more glaring light. 
It is this : To legalize crime, and throw around it the sanction 
of statutory enactments, is, undeniably, an act of much greater 
wickedness than to perpetrate it after it has been made lawful. 
Thus the members of a legislative body, which should enact a 
law authorizing theft or murder, would more deserve the pen- 
itentiary, or gallows, than the man who merely steals, or, in a 
fit of anger, takes his neighbor's life. The former justify crime. 



23 

and make it honorable, and thus obliterate all distinction between 
virtue and vice ; the latter merely commits it, when legalized, 
but attempts no justification of his offence. But the religious 
professions of the country have legalized slavery, and the infernal 
slave trade, in the District of Columbia, and in the Territory of 
Florida ! They have made their national capital one of the 
greatest slave marts on the globe ; and they now hold in slavery, 
by direct legislation, more than thirty thousand human beings, 
whom they have sternly refused to emancipate. No sect can 
claim exemption from this charge. In whatever else they differ, 
they have all united, without exception, by the almost unanimous 
voice of their members, in opposing the abolition of slavery in 
those places where they have the power to emancipate, and have 
declared to the world, by their vote (the most effective way in 
which they could speak on the subject) , that it was their sov- 
ereign will and pleasure that the traffic in human beings, which 
they have branded as piracy on the coast of Africa, should be 
lawful and honorable commerce in the United States ; and that 
the capital of this land of boasted freedom should be the Guinea 
Coast of America. Not a mother has been robbed of her babe 
within the District of Columbia, not a solitary woman has been 
sold there, without the legal sanction of more than seven eighths 
of every religious sect of the North. Even the Free-Will Bap- 
tists and the Quakers, with all their professed abhorrence of 
slavery, and their numerous public testimonies against it, in con- 
sideration of the paltry sunf of four hundred dollars paid into 
their national treasury, license the auctioneer in human flesh in 
the city of Washington. I charge this offence upon these denom- 
inations, because the immediate agents in granting these licenses 
are men of their own choice, and men, too, who were selected 
with the full knowledge of the fact that they were in favor of 
legalizing the slave-trade, and, if elected to office, would license 
it in the District of Columbia. The abolitionists have long and 
earnestly besought the pretended ministers and followers of 
Christ, of the different sects, to elect men to office who would 
abolish all legal enactments in favor of slavery, wherever they 
had the power to do it ; but their entreaties have been totally 
disregarded, and themselves treated with the most profound 
contempt. 

The nature and enormities of the domestic slave-trade which 
is now carried on in the District of Columbia, on an extensive 
scale, under the legal sanction of nearly the entire body of the 
church and clergy, may be seen in the following eloquent and 
just description of it from a Southern pen. The language is se- 
vere, but it is the severity of truth. The only fault I find with 



24 ' 

it is, that its heaviest strokes are not aimed at those who have 
thrown the shield of government around this infernal traffic, and 
made it lawful and honorable commerce. I copy it : 

[^From the Millennial Trumpeter, Tenn.'} 

'' Droves of negroes, chained together in doaens and scores, and 
hand-cuffed, have been driven through our countr}'^ in numbers 
far surpassing any previous year. And these vile slave-drivers 
and dealers are swarming like buzzards round a carrion, through- 
out this country. You cannot pass a few miles in the great 
roads without having every feeling of humanity insulted and 
lacerated by this spectacle. jS"or can you go into any county, or 
any neighborhood, scarcely, without seeing or hearing of some 
of these despicable creatures, called negro-drivers. 

"Who is a negro-driver? One whose eyes dwell with 
delight on lacerated bodies of helpless men, women, and children ; 
whose soul feels diabolical raptures at the chains, and handcuffs, 
and cart-whips, for inflicting tortures on weeping mothers torn 
from helpless babes, and on husbands and wives torn asunder for- 
ever. Who is a negro-driver ? An execrable demon, who is 
only prevented by want of power, fellow-citizens, from driving 
your wives, and sons, and daughters, in chains and hand-cufts, 
with the blood-stained cart- whip to market. Yea, his hardened 
heart would make but little difference, whether he made his ill- 
gotten gain by selling them to a merciless cotton or sugar grower, 
or by sending them directly to the, flames of hell. Is your in- 
sulted humanity, ye sons of Tennessee, your insulted sense of 
right and wrong, your abused conviction of the rights of man, 
satisfied by saying the tears, and groans, and blood of these hu- 
man droves are not the tears, and groans, and blood of our wives, 
children, brothers, and fathers ; or these ' blood-snuffing vultures ' 
of hell should not set their polluted tread on our soil with im- 
punity ? Their lives should atone for their audacity. And is 
the fountain of your sympathies dried up for the poor oppressed 
African, merely because he is helpless and defenceless ? Is the 
hand of efficient aid drawn back, merely because the enchained, 
bleeding victim cannot help himself? Is not the African thy 
brother ? Is he not a man, with all the sympathies and sensibil- 
ities of our nature ? Was he not made in the image of God ? 
Did not Christ die to redeem him ? And shall we suffer these 
miscreant fiends to drive our fellow-men in chains before our 
eyes, as brutes are driven to market ? 

" The laws, you say, protect these ruffians in their nefarious 
traffic. Yea, the laws are often made b}' wretches whose char- 
acters are frequently a/ac simile of these negro-drivers, whose 
moral picture would darken the black canvass of the pit. There 
are, at this very time, miscreants engaged in this trade, who once 



25 

polluted our legislative halls. But suppose villains enough of 
the right hue let into the legislature, and pass laws that one order 
of society may violate the honor of your wives and daughters ; 
would such a law on the pages of our statute-book secure the per- 
petrator from condign punishment? What can the dead letter 
of a statute-book do, in opposition to the public opinion of an 
enlightened and virtuous community ?" 

Dark and revolting as is the picture which I have here drawn, 
there yet remains to be added another shade of still deeper hue. 
Through whose agency was it, I ask, that a thief now fills the 
presidential chair? John Tyler, the present head and represen- 
tative of the federal government, is a veteran slave-breeder — a 
negro-thief of the old Virginia school, who has long supported 
his own family in princely luxury by desolating the domestic 
hearthstones of his defenceless neighbors, and whose crimes in 
this regard, had they been perpetrated North instead of South, 
of Mason's and Dixon's line, would have consigned him to the 
state's prison for at least two centuries, or until released by death 
from his ignominious confinement. Of Mr. Tyler's cabinet, a 
majority are negro thieves — five of the judges of the Supreme 
Court are negro thieves — the president of the United States Sen- 
ate is a negro thiet^ — the speaker of the House of Representatives 
is a negro thief — ^the officer first in command in the U. S. army 
is a negro thief — a majority of aU our ministers to foreign courts 
are negro thieves. And yet these men were all elected to ofiice 
by the votes, direct or indirect, of the great body of the North- 
ern church and clergy. But why have the clergy and their ad- 
herents shown this preference for thieves to rule the na'ion, and 
shape its .des'inies? Doubtless, because they are a "brother- 
hood of thieves," as like always seeks its like. Away, then, with 
all their pretensions to Christianity, or even common honesty. 
The man who votes wiih either of the great political parties does 
necessarily and inevitably legalize slavery, both of these parties 
being pledged not only to execute all the provisions of the Con- 
stitution in favor of slavery, but to go even farther, and perpet- 
uate the system, with all its abominations, in the District of 
Columbia ; the man who legalizes slavery, and throws around it 
the protecting shield of the government, is the most guilty and 
atrocious of slaveholders ; and every slaveholder, as I have 
already shown, is guilty of the crimes of theft, adultery, man- 
stealing, piracy, and murder. It follows, then, as a legitimate 
and certain conclusion, that as the ministers and members of 
the Northern church, with comparatively few exceptions, have 
ranged themselves in the ranks of the Whig or Democratic party, 
2 



26 

and have thus not only voluntarily formed a political alliance 
with the slave- claimants, in all the different states of the Union, 
guaranteeing- their personal security, and the return of their fugi- 
tive slaves, but have also given their direct sanction to slavery, 
by legalizing it, and refusing to emancipate those whom they 
have a constitutional right to set free, they are slaveholders in 
the most odious sense of this term, and, as such, are guilty of all 
the crimes alleged against them in my first charge. 

From the conclusion to which we have here arrived there is no 
possible escape. Two and a half millions of our countrymen, 
now loaded with chains and fetters, demand their liberty at our 
hands. Shall they be free? What say the Northern church 
and clergy ? By voting for men to rule the country who are 
known to be the uncompromising opponents of abolition, they 
answer — No ! By refusing to annul that portion of the Federal 
Compact which requires them to return fugitives from slavery, 
and put down the slaves, should they attempt to regain their lib- 
erty by a resort to arms, they answer — No! By stilling the 
voice of free discussion, and stirring up mobs against the aboli- 
tionists, they answer — No! Whatever influence they possess, as 
citizens, is all thrown into the scale of slavery. They looked 
upon John Tyler as he robbed the frantic mother of her babe, 
and forthwith made him president of the United States ! They 
have seen Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun tear the tender and 
confiding wife from the fond embrace of her husband, and sell 
her to a stranger, and they are now eager to confer on them the 
same splendid honors ! And at this very moment, they stand, 
with sword in hand, ready to thrust it into the heart of the slave, 
should he assert his freedom and extend the hand of protection 
to his insulted and outraged wife and daughters ! 

Should these charges chance to meet the eye of the guilty 
authors of this wrong, they will doubtless ask, '' Is thy servant a 
dog that he should do this great thing ?" Yes, I answer, em- 
phatically, ye a.re dogs — the tvatch-dogs of your SouUiem mas- 
ters, lohose plantations ye guard — and as such, ye are more brutal 
and inhuman than the servant of the Syrian king. Ye daily rob 
more than three hundred of your own country-women of their 
new-born babes, and doom those babes to a fate more horrible \ 
than death, breaking the mother's heart ! Ye have recklessly 
trampled under foot the sacred institution of marriage, consigned 
every sixth woman in the country to a life of hopeless concubi- 
nage and adultery, and turned your famous Ten-Miles Square 
into a mart where the rich aristocrat may lawfully sell the poor 
man's wife for purposes of prostitution, thus legalizing violence 



27 

on female chastity in its most horrible and disgusting forms. 
Think, ve fathers and mothers, against whom I bring these tre- 
mendous charges ; O, think of your own daughters on the block 
of the auctioneer, to be sold to any vile and loathsome wretch 
who may choose to purchase them, to pander to his beastly lusts! 
See your own darling son, in the person of George Latimer, kid- 
napped in oy^en day, in the heart of Ncav England's metropolis, 
and under the very eye of her pulpit : behold him manacled in 
open court, and dragged in chains tiirough the streets of that 
proud city, not by a drunken mob, but by the police, with the 
city marshal at their head ; and finally immured with felons in a 
dismal cell, there to wait, for weeks, with trembling anxiety, the 
horrible doom of a recaptured slave — and tell me if they are not 
dogs, na,y,Jiends incarnate, who perpetrate such outrages! But 
remember, ''Thou art the man!'' What I have here supposed 
to be clone to thv son and daughters, tliou hast done to the son 
and (laughters of another ! 

No intelligent person, man or woman, who is in concert with 
the Whig or Democratic party, or who votes for any other than 
an uncompromising abolitionist for civil office, or silently coun- 
tenances such voting,- can say. in truth, he is innocent of these 
crinu's. It is impossible ! Sooner will Pontius Pilate shake 
from his spotted robes the blood of the murdered Jesus ; sooner^ 
far sooner, will the infatuated Jew, who cried "Away with him, 
away with lum, let him be crucified," stand" acquitted before the 
bar of his final Judge, than such a man exculpate himself from 
the guilt of slavery. In imitation of the Roman judge, he may 
wash his hands before the people by passing resolves against 
slavery, or excluding slave-claimants from his communion table, 
and say, " I am innocent of the blood of the slave ;" but it is of 
no avail. Still in his " skirts is found the blood of the souls of 
the poor innocents.'' For private ends, he continues to sustain, 
by his vote, a system which, in words, he has repudiated, as the 
supple tool of the envious Pharisees condemned to death the man 
whom he had previously ])ronounced without a fault; and hence, 
in his ecclesiastical'condemnfttiori of slavery, he only adds to the 
crime of slaveholding the guilt of base hypocrisy. So long as a 
solitary slave shall leave his foot-prints on our soil, or clank his 
chains in our ears, no position can be innocent, nor safe, but 
that of uncompromising hostility to whatever is in fellowship or 
alliance with the slave poAver ; and they alone who have assumed 
this position can justly claim exemption from the charge of slave- 
holding. 

I might pursue the political asj)ect of this subject still farther, 
and bring together a great amount of additional proof in support 



28 

of my positions. But it is needless. Indeed more evidence 
would only lumber and confuse the mind, instead of aiding its 
conclusions. I will, therefore, conclude with a single additional 
consideration. 

The remark which I wish to add is this : The clerical and lay 
members, with few exceptions, of all the various religious sects 
in the country, are identified with one of the two great political 
parties which administer and control the government, either by 
actually voting for their candidates, or by a silent acquiescence 
in, and approval of, their measures. Those clergymen who ab- 
sent themselves from the polls, but fail to rebuke the members 
of their respective churches for voting with those parties in sup- 
port of slavery, are as responsible for their votes as they would 
be had they deposited them in the ballot-box with their own 
hands. This, at least, is the doctrine of the ancient prophet : 
" When I say unto the loicked, ivicked man, thou shalt surely 
die; if thou dost not speak to loarn the wicked from his toay, that 
ivicked man shall die in his iniquity ; but his blood loill I require 
at thine hand.'''' [Ezekiel xxxiii, 8.] Hence, politically, the sects 
are Whig and Democrat ; and up to this hour they have gone all 
lengths with these parties, in their " Tippecanoe and Tyler, too," 
and " Kinderhook" conventions for the election of slave-masters, 
and "Northern men with Southern principles," to fill the high- 
est offices in the gift of the people. Kow, I ask, were their own 
children in slavery, would they be found in the ranks of these 
parties ? If you say, Yea, then I reply, Would they honor with 
the highest offices in the government the men who had debauched 
their own daughters, and sold the flesh, and bones, and blood of 
their sons in liuman shambles ? If you say, Nay : then, without 
further argument, are they individually convicted of knowingly 
and intentiona,lly contributing of their influence to support the 
slave system — a system that robs two and a half millions of our 
countrymen of every right and privilege which renders life a 
blessing; and therefore they must answer to God, not for the 
enslavement of one or two individuals merely, but of every vic- 
tim of our country's wrongs who now j^ines in his chains. And 
if Christianity be not a fable, Christ will say to them in the day 
of judgment, not only for what they have actually done to sustain 
slavery, but for what they have neglected to do for its overthrow, 
" I was a hungered, and ye gave me no meat ; I was thirsty, and 
ye gave me no drink ; I v/as a stranger, and ye took me not in ; 
naked, and ye clothed me not ; sick and in prison," — down on 
the ijlantations of the South — " and ye visited me not." , " Depart 
from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil 



29 

and his angels." For, "Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye 
did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.'" 

In the former part of my letter, I have shown that slavery is 
an American and not a Southern institution, and that the North 
and South are leagued together politically in its. support. I 
have also shown, both by reference to facts, and from the testi- 
mony of distinguished men at the South, that the slave power 
could not sustain itself a single hour without the aid and protec- 
tion of the general government, but must fall at once before the 
avenging arm of its outraged victims ; and, consequently, that 
all who sustain the government in its present pro-slavery charac- 
ter, do thereby sustain the slave system, and should be held 
responsible for all the guilt and misery which it involves. But 
while the federal government, that is, the electors of the country, 
are the direct and visible agents on whose authority and foster- 
ing care slavery depends for support and perpetuity, there is, in 
this case, as in most others of a like nature, "a power behind the 
throne greater than the throne itself;" for in a country like 
ours, civil government is of no force, any farther than it is sus- 
tained by popular sentiment. The will of the people for the 
time being is the supreme law of the land, the legislative and 
executive departments of the government being nothing more 
than a mere echo of the popular will. Hence the power which 
controls public opinion does, in fact, give laws to our country, 
and is, therefore, preeminently responsible for the vices which 
are sanctioned by those laws. That power in this case, is the 
priesthood, backed up and supported by the church. They are 
the manufacturers of our public sentiment; and, consequently, 
they hold in theii' hand the key to the great prison-house of 
Southern despotism, and can " open and no man shut, and shut 
and no man open." 

There are in our country more than twenty thousand of this 
class of men, scattered over every part of the land, and at the 
same time so united in national and local associations as to act 
in perfect harmony, whenever concert is required. They con- 
stitute what may properly be termed a religious aristocracy . 
Among the exclusive privileges which they clami and enjoy, is 
the right to administer the ordinances of religion, and to lead in 
all our religious services. The ear of the nation is open to them 
every seventh day of the week, when they pour into it just such 
sentiments as they choose. And not only are they in direct and 
constant contact with the people in their public ministrations, 
but in their parochial visits, at the sick bed, at weddings, and at 
funerals, all of which are occasions when the mind is peculiarly 
tender, and susceptible of deep and lasting impressions. Amply 



30 

supported by the contributions of the church, their whole tune is 
devoted to the work of moukling and giving character to public 
sentiment ; and with the advantages which they enjoy over all 
other classes of society, of leisure, the sanctity of their office, 
and direct and constant contact with the people as their " spirit- 
ual guides," their power has boj.'onie all-controlling. It is in a 
finite sense onmipresent in every section of the country, and 
is absolutely irresistible, wherever their claims are allowed. 
Hence, what they countenance, it will be next to an impossi- 
bility to overthrow, at least till their oi'der itself be overthrown ; 
and whatever system of evil they oppose, must melt away like 
snow beneath the warm rays of an April sun. 

To illustrate the strength of their power more fully, I will 
suppose a case. The car of temperance rolls back its ponder- | 
ous wheels, and we become a nation of drunkards. Midnight ' 
gloom covers the whole land. The voice of the reformer is no 
longer heard in stern rebuke against the general debauch which 
is now rife in every rank and grade of society. The traffic in 
intoxicating drinks is legalized in all parts of the country, and 
by a law of Congress for the District of Columbia, every person 
who visits the seat of government on business, or for pleasure, 
may be compelled to drink to intoxication, on penalty of thirty- 
nine lashes on his bare back, inflicted at discretion of the rum- 
sellers of the district. 

In this state of things, suddenly some daring spirit starts up, 
and with the watchword of reform gathers around him a little 
band of fearless coadjutors, who, with himself, pledge their lives, 
their fortunes, and their sacred honor, to the glorious work of 
delivering the country from the scourge and curse of intemper- 
ance. Struck with the sanctity of their professions, they natu- 
rally look to the priesthood and church for aid and cooperation. 
But to their surprise, they find that thousands of the clergy are 
not only the victims, but the apologists and advocates, of this 
degrading vice and crime ; many of them among the best custom- 
ers of the rum-seller ; they often go reeling and staggering from 
the grog-shop to the meeting-house, and are obliged to ascend 
the pulpit on borrowed feet; and it not unfrequently occurs, 
during the divine services of the Sabbath, that the sentiments 
of melting tenderness, which flow forth in supplication from the 
pious heart of the ofliciating priest, are interrupted hi their 
passage by a sudden explosion of the contents of the decanter 
from his surcharged stomach. Deacons, too, in countless num- 
bers, are drunkards ; the communion season is often a Bacchana 
lian revel ; and much of the revenues of the church is the profits 
of the distillery. Doctors of divinity and presidents of our theo 



31 

logical seminaries are often found engaged in amassing wealth 
by rmnselling ; and not a few of the members and officers of the 
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and of 
the American Bible Society, are addicted to habitual intoxica- 
tion ; while the entire body of the priesthood and church, of all 
denominations, are united in electing to the highest offices in the 
gift of the people men who are not only notorious drunkards, 
but who are also known to be in favor of perpetuating the in- 
famous law, in the District of Columbia, which allows the rum- 
sellers of the district to compel the citizens of the place, and 
strano^ers from abroad, to drink to intoxication, or submit to 
thirty-nine lashes on their bare backs. 

Schooled in the philosophy of the apostle who taught that 
"judgment must begin at the house of God," the reformers call 
first upon the church and priesthood to repent, and sign the 
pledge of total abstinence. A few comply with the call, and not 
only sign the pledge, but advocate its merits ; but much the 
larger portion continue to drink ; and to save their own reputa- 
tion, they pour contem]3t and ridicule on the friends of total 
abstinence, and wink at the mobs which are got up to put them 
down. Presbyteries resolve that drunkenness "is not opposed 
to the will of God.*" The General Conference of the_Methodist 
Episcopal church declare, by an overwhelming vote, that they 
have no "right, wish, or intention" to abolish intemperance. 
Professor Stuart comes out in a published letter, and denounces 
the lectures on total abstinence as mere " spoutings and vehe- 
mence," and boldly declares that men may get drunk '' without 
violating the Christian faith, or the church. " President Fisk 
endorses this doctrine, and asserts that it " will stand, because 
it is Bible doctrine." Some of the smaller sects, and local bodies 
in the more inffiiential ones, pass resolutions in favor of temper- 
• ance ; but at the same time slander and traduce its firmest and 
most unflinching friends, because they refuse to recognize a 
rum-drinking and rum-selling church and clergy as the represen- 
tatives and followers of Christ ; and, as if to give undoubted 
proof of their hypocrisy, they still continue to vote for drunkards 
and the advocates of the compulsion laAv for the presidency and 
and all other important offices in the gift of the people, and 
sternly resist every importunity of the friends of temperance to 
aid in the election of men who are in favor of repealing that 
infernal enactment. 

Now, with the church and clergy in this position, what prog- 
ress, I ask, could the friends of temperance hope to make in 
their work of reform? It requires all the moral power which 
they can command to make headway against the depraved appe- 



32 

tite of the drunkard, with the church and clergy nominally in 
their favor. What, then, could they do with this mighty influ- 
ence openly pitted against them, and on the side of the 
drunkard? Would they ever dream of putting down intemper- 
ance by political action, so long as the land was cursed with a 
drunken and besotted church and priesthood, and they were 
themselves in full fellowship with that church and priesthood ? 
Surely, no man in his sober senses would ever seriously entertain 
such an idea. Men of sense would see, at a glance, that the 
church and clergy were a strong and impervious rampart around 
the citadel of intemperance, and that the only hope of our coun- 
try was in their speedy conversion or utter overthrow. 

But is there any analogy between the case I have here sup- 
posed and the one under consideration ? Is it true that thou- 
sands of the ministers of our country are slaveholders? Are our 
deacons, in countless numbers, slave-breeders and slave-traders ? 
Do docters of divinity, and presidents of our theological semina- 
ries, enhance their wealth by plundering cradles and trundle- 
beds? Do members and officers of the A. B. C. F. M. and of 
the A. B. S. claim their neighbors' wives and daughters, and 
ajopropriate them to their own use as chattels personal ? Have 
presbyteries passed resolves that "the holding of slaves, so far 
from being a sin in the sight of God, is fiowhere condemned in 
his holy word" ? Has the General Conference of the Methodist 
Episcopal church publicly declared that it had " no right, wish, 
or intention" to abolish the infernal slave system ? 

Has Professor Stuart denounced the lectures of abolitionists 
as mere " spouting and vehemence,'' and boldly declared that 
the strong may enslave the weak, without violating the " Chris- 
tian faith or the church" ? And has President Fisk endorsed 
this doctrine, and asserted that " it will stand, because it is Bible 
doctrine''' 7 Do those sects and local ecclesiastical bodies which 
adopt resolutions in favor of anti-slavery, at the same time slan- 
der and vilify the character of its firmest and most unflinching 
friends, because they refuse to recognize a pro-slavery church 
and clergy as the followers of Christ ? And do they, as a body, 
still persist in voting for slave-claimants and pro-slavery men to 
fill the highest offices in the gift of the people, and that, too, 
against the earnest remonstrances and entreaties of the aboli- 
tionists ? Truth, I regret to say, requires an aflirmative answer 
to all these questions ! The entire body of the church and clergy 
of the country are in Christian fellowship with slavery, that is, 
with those who legalize the system ; while a large proportion of 
them are its open and unblushing advocates and apologists ! 
Not a solitary sect in the land, of any magnitude, has espoused 



33 

the anti-slavery cause. They all, without exception, stand on 
the side of the oppressor, and legalize his atrocities. They pass 
from the communion table to the ballot-box, and there deposit 
their votes for the man who has robbed his neighbor's cradle, to 
fill the highest office in the gift of the people. Not a chain has 
been forged, — not a fetter has been riveted on any human being 
in the District of Columbia, without their sanction ! The ques- 
tion has often been put to them. Do you, the professed ministers 
and followers of Christ, wish the capital of your country to re- 
main a human flesh-mart, where your Saviour may be sold, in the 
person of his followers, under the auction hammer? and they 
have as often returned an affirmative answer! And,- whenever 
the abolitionists have sent up their petitions to Congress for the 
abolition of slavery, the church and clergy have sent men there, 
as their representatives, who have basely trampled those petitions 
under their feet ! 

But it is not in their political capacity that the influence of 
the church and clergy has been most prejudicial to the cause of 
emancipation. True, they have rivalled the infidel and nothing- 
arian in their support of pro-slavery parties ; and their recreancy 
at the ballot-box has been such as to merit the severest epithets 
which I have ever bestowed upon them. But in their ecclesias- 
tical character, they have puhlicly defended the slave system as an 
innocent and Heaven-ordained institution, and have throivn the 
sacred sanctions of religion around it, by introducing it into the 
pulpit, and to the communion table ! At the South, nearly the 
entire body of the clergy publicly advocate the perpetuity of 
slavery, and denounce the abolitionists as fanatics, incendiaries, 
and cut-throats ; and the churches and clergy of the North still 
fellowship them, and palm them off upon the world as the minis- 
ters of Christ. I know it will be said that there are excep- 
tions to this charge ; but if there be any, I have yet to learn of 
them. I know not of a single ecclesiastical body in the country 
which has excommunicated any of its members for the crime of 
slaveholding, since the commencement of the anti-slavery enter- 
prise, though most of them have cast out the true and faithful 
abolitionists from their communion. 

I might, with great propriety, pursue these general remarks, 
and indulge in a somewhat severer strain ; but to understand the 
true character of the American church and clergy, and the full 
extent of their atrocities, you must hear them speak in their own 
language. Should I tell you the lohole truth respecting them, and 
tell it in my own words, I fear you would entertain the same opin- 
ion of me that the Bramin did of his English friend, who, on a cer- 
2* 



34 

tain occasion, as they were walking together along the banks of 
a beautiful river, admiring the richness of its scenery, impru- 
dently remarked, that in his country, during the winter season, 
the water became so solid that an elephant could walk upon it. 
The Bramin replied, — " Sir, you have told me many strange and 
incredible things respecting your country before, yet I have 
always believed you to be a man of truth, but now I know you 
lie." So, if I tell the truth respecting the American church and 
clergy, I am afraid you will think me guilty of falsehood. I will 
therefore introduce several of the leading sects, and let them 
speak for themselves, through the resolves of their respective 
ecclesiastical bodies, and the published sentiments of their 
accredited ministers ; and although you may not believe me, 
should I tell you that they have " no wish or intention" to abol- 
ish slavery, yet you will believe them, I trust, when you hear the 
declaration from their own lips. I will begin with 

THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

This church extends, in territory, over the whole Union, and 
embraces in its communion, at the present time, over 1,000,000 
members, of whom probably not less than 100,000 are slaves. 
It comprises thirty-two Annual Conferences, from which dele- 
gates are chosen to meet in General Conference, once in four 
years. The church is governed by six bishops, who are elected 
by the General Conference, and whose duty it is to preside at 
the Annual Conferences ; fix the appointment of preachers ; or- 
dain bishops, elders, and deacons; and oversee the spiritual and 
temporal business of the church. 

The first meeting of the General Conference, subsequent to 
the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society, was in Cin- 
cinnati, in May, 1836. On the evening of the 10th of May, the 
Cincinnati A. S. S. held a public meeting, which was addressed 
by two of the members of the Conference. On the 12th of May, 
Rev. S. G. Roszell presented to the Conference the following 
preamble and resolutions : 

" Whereas great excitement has pervaded this country on the 
subject of modern abolitionism, which is reported to have been 
increased in this city recently, by the unjustifiable conduct of two 
members of the General Conference in lecturing upon, and in 
favor of that agitating topic; and whereas such a course on the 
part of an}' of its members is calculated to bring upon this body 
the suspicion and distrust of the community, and misrepresent its 
sentiments in regard to the point at issue; and whereas, in this 
aspect of the case, a due regard for its own character, as well as a 



35 

just concern for the interests of the church confided to its care, 
demand a full, decided, and unequirocal expression of the views 
of the General Conference in the premises ; " — Therefore, 
Resolved, — 

1. *'By the delegates of the Annual Conference in General 
Conference assembled, that they disapprove, in the most unquali- 
fied sense, the conduct of the two members of the General Con- 
ference, who are reported to have lectured in this city recently 
upon, and in favor of modern abolitionism." 

Resolved, — 

2. " By the delegates of the Annual Conference in General 
Conference assembled, — that they are decidedly opposed to modern 
abolitionism, and wholly disclaim any right, wish, or intention 
to interfere in the civil and political relation between master and 
slave, as it exists in the slaveholding states of the Union." 

These resolutions, after a full discussion, were adopted by the 
Conference — the first by a vote of 122 to 11, the last 120 to 14. 

Accompanying these resolutions, as they went forth to the 
world to "define the position'' of the Methodist Episcopal church 
on the great question which is now agitating the land, was a pas- 
toral address to. the churches, which contains the following pas- 
sages : 

" These facts, which are only mentioned here as a reason for the 
friendl}' admonition which we wish to give you, constrain us, as 
your pastors, who are called to watch over your souls, as they 
must give account, to exhort you to abstain frojn all abolition 
movements and associations, and to refrain from patronizing any 
of their publications. &c. 

"From every view of the subject which we have been able to 
take, and from the most calm and dis{:iassionate survey of the 
whole ground, we have come to the conclusion, that the only safe, 
scriptural, and prudent way for us, both as ministers and people, 
to take, is wholly to refrain from this agitating subject,''' &c. 

Such was the language of the representative body of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal church on the great question of emancipation in 
1836. They here declare, emphatically, that they have no " wish 
or intention to interfere in the civil and political relation between 
master and slave," and exhort their brethren to "abstain from 
all abolition movements and associations," and " wholly to refrain 
from this agitating subject " ! And what could a conclave of 
demons in hell have said more? Surely no other banditti on 
earth would have gone so far — not in hypocrisy, at least, if they 
had in cold-blooded barbarity. Mark the language of the rev- 
erend scoundrels. They have no '' ivish or intention'''' to abolish 



36 

the infernal slave system ! Every circumstance of the scene "con- 
tributes to heighten their guilt. They claim to be ambassadors 
of Christ, assembled for the purpose of extending his kingdom 
on the earth, — before them lie two millions of their countrymen, 
ground into the very dust beneath "a bondage, one hour of 
which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which our 
fathers rose in rebellion to oppose ;" and yet they have " no loisli 
or intention to interfere with their civil and political relations ''! 
These hapless victims of republican despotism are prohibited by 
law from learning the letters of the alphabet, and, of course, from 
reading the Bible ; and as a necessary consequence of their con- 
dition as chattels, they are deprived of the institution of marriage, 
and doomed to a life of universal prostitution and concubinage — 
and yet they have " no wish or intention to interfere with their 
civil and political relations" ! A million of American women are 
daily thrown into the market, and offered for sale for purposes 
of prostitution, to any person of suflicient -wealth to command 
their price — and yet they have " no wish or intention to interfere 
with their civil and political relations " ! They see before them men 
and women, many of them members of their own church, chained 
together by dozens and scores, handcuffed, and driven from their 
homes, and all that is dear to them on earth, to a distant market, 
and there sold with the meanest brutes — and yet they have " no 
wish or intention to interfere with their civil and political rela- 
tions " ! They look abroad over the country, and behold the 
hundreds of mothers who are daily robbed of their darling babes, 
and witness the keen anguish and perfect desperation to which 
they are often driven by the strength of maternal affection — and 
yet they have " no wish or intention to interfere with their civil 
and po itical relations " ! No, they have not one solitary word of 
consolation for the poor, heart-broken, despairing slave ! They 
have "wo loish " to see him free ! So they tell us. The clank of 
the chain, and the crack of the driver's whip, are music to their 
ears ! They cannot even pray that this nefarious system may 
come to an end, for " they are decidedly opposed to modern aboli- 
tionism.'''' Not less so, doubtless, than Beelzebub himself. They 
prefer the continuance of slavery ! And not content with merely 
passing by their robbed and bleeding countrymen, like the priest 
and Levite of old, and leaving them to the charities of others, 
they must turn aside from \\\q\y p>ious calling to give a dagger- 
thrust at the reputation of those who are kindly binding up their 
wounds ! 

The next meeting of this body was in Baltimore, in 1840. It 
was to be hoped that the rising spirit of liberty which was now 
agitating the country, and opening the eyes of thousands to the 



37 

wrongs of our enslaved countrymen, would reach the ministry of 
the Methodist church, and in some degree, at least, soften their 
obdurate hearts. But the action of this Conference shows that 
the preaching of the truth, so far as they were concerned, had 
only proved " a savor of death unto death.'' Instead of lighten- 
ing the burdens of the previous Conference, their little Jiyiger was 
thicker than their predecessors' loins. The Conference of 1836 
had chastised the slaves and their advocates with whips, but they 
chastised them with scorpions. Up to this date, the slaves in 
this church had, nominally at least, enjoyed that last privilege of 
the oppressed, the right of complaint. But, for reasons to which 
I shall hereafter refer, this sacred right was now wrested from 
them, and all recognition of their manhood totally annihilated at 
one fell swoop, by the adoption of the following resolution, which 
was presented by the Rev. Dr. A. G. Fgav, of Georgia: 

Resolved, — 
"That it is inexpedient and unjustifiable for any preacher to 
permit colored persons to give testimony against white persons, 
in any state where they are denied that privilege by law." 

By this rule, which is now a part of the discipline of the church, 
more than 80,000 of its colored members are denied the right to 
testify against a wJiite brother or sister in any case whatsoever. 
No matter what the crime may be, or how aggravating the cir- 
cumstances. The reverend mover of the resolution can now 
violate the chastity of the colored members of his church with 
entire impunity. He is no longer in any danger of being cen- 
sured and silenced by his more fortunate brethren, as the late 
Rev. Dr. Fay was. Should he unfortunately be " overtaken in a 
fault,'''' the church has "provided a way of escape." And an 
ample provision it is, even for the chiefest of sinners. Neither 
the reverend doctor, nor any of his coadjutors, could desire 
greater liberty — or privileges, as they might term it. The lips 
of their victims and her friends are now hermetically sealed up, 
both in the church and in the civil tribunals. The aggrieved 
party can now obtain no redress, however aggravated the offence. 
The state has declared her body to be the property of her white 
brolher ; and the church has decided that it will entertain none 
of her complaints, whatever use he may make of it. What more 
could even the clergy ask ? But I forbear. 

The course of the faithless miscreants who adopted this and 
the preceding resolutions, was acquiesced in by all the local 
Conferences, and cordially approved by most of them, and by 
nearly all the distinguished and influential ministers in the denom- 
ination. 



38 

In support of the position assumed by the General Conference, 
the Ohio Annual Conference 

Resolved, — 
'' That those brethren of'the iSTorth, who resist the abolition 
movements with firmness and moderation, are the true friends of 
the church, to the slaves of the South, and to the constitution of 
our common country," etc. 

The New York Annual Conference 

Resolved, — 

1. " That this Conference fully concur in the advice of the late 
General Conference, as expressed in their Pastoral Address. 

2. " That we disapprove of the members of this Conference pat- 
ronizing, or in any way giving countenance to a paper called 
' Zion's Watchman,' because, in our opinion it tends to disturb 
the peace and harmony of the body, by sowing dissension in the 
church." 

Resolved, — 

3. "That although we do not condemn any man, or withhold 
our suifrages from him on account of his opinions merely, in refer- 
ence to the subject of abolitionism, yet we are decidedly of the 
opinion that none ought to be elected to the office of deacon or 
elder in our church, unless he give a pledge to the Conference, 
that he will refrain from agitating the church with discussions 
on this subject." 

The Georgia Annual Conference 

Resolved unanimously, — 

1. " That it is the sense of the Georgia Annual Conference, that 
slavery, as it exists in the United States, is not a moral evil.'' 

Resolved. — 

2. " That we view slavery as a civil and domestic institution, 
and one with which, as ministers of Christ, we have nothing to 
do, further than to ameliorate the condition of the slave, by en- 
deavorinsx to impart to him and his master the benign influence 
of the religion of Christ, and aiding both on their way to heaven." 

Which religion in the opinion of the Methodist Episcopal 
church, is not opposed to the perpetuity of slavery ; but allows 
one member of the church to claim and use another's loife as his 
property, and to appropriate her to such use as he may deem 
proper or desirable, the enslaved woman having no right to enter 
and substantiate a complaint against her master before the 
church ! This is Methodism ! This is the religion which the 
Methodist clergy ^' impart ''"' to the poor, heart-broken slave, and 



39 

to liis inhuman master. This, too, is the religion which they 
"■ impart ''"' to their poor deluded vassals at the North. Bear 
with me while I present a few more specimens of it from the lips 
of its most distinguished advocates. 

Rev. E. D. Simons, professor in Macon College : 

*' These extracts from holy writ unequivocally assert the 
EIGHT of property IN SLAVES, together with the usual incidents 
of that right ; such as the power of acquisition and disposition in 
various ways, according to municipal regulations. The right to 
buy and sell, and to transmit to children by the way of inheri- 
tance, is clearly stated. The only restriction on the subject is in 
reference to the tnarket, in which slaves or bond men were to be 
purchased. 

" Upon the whole, then, whether we consult the Jewish polity 
instituted by God himself, or the uniform opinion and practice of 
mankind in all ages of the world, or the injunctions of the New 
Testament and the moral law, we are brought to the conclusion 
that slavery is not immoral. 

"Having established the point that the first African slaves were 
legally brought into bondage, the right to detain their children 
in bondage, follows as an indispensable consequence. 

"Thus we see that the slavery which exists in America was 
founded in right." 

Rev. Wilbur Fisk, d.d., late president of the Wesleyan Uni- 
versity, Connecticut : 

"The relation of master and servant ma}^ and does, in many 
cases, exist under such circumstances, as frees the master from the 
just charge and guilt of immorality. 

" The general rule of Christianity not only permits, but, in sup- 
posable circumstances, enjoins a continuance of the master's au- 
thority. 

"The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave as an 
obligation due to a present rightful authority." 

Elijah Hedding, d. d., one of the six Methodist bishops : 

"The right to hold a slave is founded on this rule: 'There- 
fore, all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, 
do ye even so unto them; for this is the law and the prophets.' " 

Rev. William Winans, of Mississippi, in the General Confer- 
ence, in 1836 : 

" He was not born in a slave state — he was a Pennsylvanian by 
birth. He had been brought up to believe a slaveholder as great 



40 

a villain as a horse-thief; but he had gone to the South, and long 
residence there had changed his views; he had become a slave- 
holder ow ^y'mci/^Ze." -Jt * * "Though a slaveholder himself, 
no abolitionist felt more sympathy for the slave than he did — none 
had rejoiced more in the hope of a coming period, when the print 
of a slave's foot would not be seen on the soil." * * * "It was 
important to the interests of slaves, and in view of the question 
of slavery, that there be Christians who were slaveholders. Chris- 
tian ministers should be slaveholders, and diffused throughout the 
South. Yes, sir, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, should be 
slaveholders: — yes, he repeated it boldly — there should be mem- 
bers, and deacons, and elders, and BISHOPS, too, who were 
slaveholders." 

Rev. J. C. Postell, Orangeburg, South Carolina, in an address 
at a public meeting called for the purpose of opposing abolition : 

"From what has been premised the following conclusions re- 
sult: 1. That slavery is a judicial visitation. 2. That it is not 
a moral evil. 3. That it is suipjiorted hy the Bible. 4. It has ex- 
isted in all ages. 

" It is not a moral evil. The fact, that slavery is of divine 
APPOINTMENT, would be proof enough with the Christian that it 
cannot be a moral evil." * * -^J- "So far from being a moral 
evil, it is a merciful visitation. If slavery was either the inven- 
tion of man, or a moral evil, it is logical to conclude, the power 
to create has the power to destroy. Why, then, has it existed ? 
And why does it now exist amid all the power of legislation in 
state and church, and the clamor of abolitionists ? It is the Lord's 
DOINGS, AND IT IS MARVELLOUS IN OUR EYES ; and had it not 
been for the best, God alone, who is able, long since would have 
overruled it. It is by divine appointment." 

The same individual to the editor of Zion''s Watchman : 

" To La Roy Sunderland, &c. 

"Did you calculate to misrepresent the Methodist discipline, 
and say it supported abolitionism, when the General Conference, 
in their late resolutions, denounced it as a libel on truth. 'O full 
of all subtlety, thou child of the devil f all liars, saith the sacred 
volume, shall have their part in the lake of fire and brimstone. 

"I can only give one reason why you have not been indicted 
for a libel. The law says, 'The greater the truth the greater the 
libel; ' and as your paper has no such ingredient, it is construed 
but a small matter. But if you desire to educate the slaves, I 
will tell you how to raise the money, without editing Zion''s 
Watchman. You and old Arthur Tappan come out to the South 
this winter, and they will raise one hundred thousand dollars for 



41 

you. New Orleans itself will be pledged for it. Desiring no 
further acquaintance with you, and never expecting to see you 
but once in time or eternity, that is, at the judgment, I subscribe 
myself, the friend of the Bible, and the opposer of abolitionists. 

"J. C. POSTELL, 

"Orangeburg, July 21st, 1836." 

Rev. Geo. W. Langhorne, of North Carolina, to the editor of 
ZiorCs Herald : 

"I, sir, would as soon be found in the ranks of a banditti, as 
numbered with Arthur Tappan and his wanton coadjutors. 
Nothing is more appalling to my feelings as a man, contrary to 
ray principles as a Christian, and repugnant to my soul as a mm- 
ister, than the insidious proceedings of such men. 

" If you have not resigned your credentials as a minister of the 
Methodist Episcopal church, I really think that, as an honest man, 
you should now do it. In your ordination vows you solemnly 
promised to be obedient to those who have rule over yoa; and 
since they (the General Conference) have spoken, and that dis- 
tinctly, too, on this subject, and disapprobate your conduct, I con- 
ceive you are bound to submit to their authority, or leave the 
church." 

Rev. Mr. Crawder, of Virginia, in the General Conference, 
1840: 

" Slavery is not only countenanced, permitted, and regulated, 
by the Bible, but it was positively instituted by God himself — 
he has in so many words enjoined it." 

Such is the present ecclesiastical position of the Methodist 
Episcopal church, in relation to the system which John Wesley 
denounced as the sum of all villanies, and which, as I have clearly 
shown, no person can support or countenance, directly or indi- 
rectly, without thereby becoming a. felon of the most odious and 
criminal character. "Nearly one half of the ministers," in the 
eleven states of the Union, "hold slaves and trade in them" — 
that is, they claim their neighbors' wives, rob cradles and tnindle- 
beds, and sell their own church members for purposes of prosti- 
tution (if the purchaser choose to put them to that use) ; and the 
church, meanwhile, through its highest tribunal, by a vote of 120 
to 14, declares itself" decidedly opposecV to the abolition of this 
monstrous wickedness, and asserts that it has " no right, ivish, or 
intention to interfere" with it ; and one of the six bishops, and he a 
Northern man, the Rev. Elijah Hedding, d. d., tells us that " the 
right to hold slaves " — that is, to claim his neighbors' wife and 



42 

daughters as his property, and to use them as such — "is founded 
on the rule, ' Therefore 'all things whatsoever ye would that others 
should do to you, do ye even so to them !' !" Is not this church, 
then, a " Brotherhood of Thieves '^ ? Is it not, rather, a conclave 
of incarnate fiends, whose influence is as much more corrupting 
to the morals of the community than the influence of the theatre, 
as its doctrines are more damnable ? For one, much as I dep- 
recate the erection of a theatre, I deprecate the erection of a 
Methodist meeting-house more! The stage does not teach my 
neighbors that the New Testament allows them to enslave my 
wife and children; but the Methodist pulpit cZoes/ I know not 
in what light you view this subject, but for myself I regard every 
intelligent communicant in the Alethodist church as more guilty 
and infamous, in the sight of God, than the common prostitute, 
the pickpocket, or the assassin ; and I cannot associate with him 
on any other terms of intercourse than those which I stipulate 
for these infamous characters. 

But the Methodists are not sinners above all the sects in the 
land. All the other large denominations are of a kindred char- 
acter, as will appear from an examination of their ecclesiastical 
history, and the sentiments of their most distinguished ministers. 
They all legalize slavery, and most of them, as we shall see, own 
slaves, and publicly vindicate the system, or are silent as to its 
wrongs. This is specially true of 

THE PRESBYTERIAN AND CONGREGATIONAL 
CHURCH. 

The Presbyterians and orthodox Congregationalists of the 
United States, numbering in all about 600,000 communicants, are 
virtually one sect, or denomination ; their only difference being 
about church government. On all other points of religious faith, 
slavery not excepted, they are agreed. They are all in Chris- 
tian fellowship with each other ; and are connected together by 
Associations, Presbyteries, Synods, and General Assemblies. 
They are united in their missionary operations ; their ministers 
intermingle on exchanges and parochial settlements ; their com- 
munion table is common ; and they recommend and receive mem- 
bers from one to the other without any change of faith. And to 
make the fellowship more complete, and the connection more 
perfect, the General Association of the Congregationalists, in all 
the New England States, where the Congregational church is 
mainly located, send delegates to the General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian church and receive their delegates in return. In 
1838, the General Assembly separated on some unimportant 



43 

points of doctrine; but the denomination Is still one SLnd undi- 
vided ; and the separation was nothing more than the cleaving of 
air, which closes immediately behind the intersecting instrument. 
Hence, connected as all the local churches are with the general 
body, no person can unite with any one of them without being 
thereby brought into fellowship Avith the whole ; for there is no 
local church in the country, of which 1 have any knowledge, 
which is disconnected from the main body ; and it is not material 
whether we fellowship slave-claimants directly, or fellowship 
those who are in fellowship with them. In either case, the chain 
which binds us to slavery being unbroken, we partake of its sins, 
and must receive of its plagues. 

Now, there are in this church a large number of clergymen, 
men of great intluence with the denomination, who gain their 
subsistence by preaching sermons, making prayers, and stealing 
babes! These " spiritual guides " of the Presbyterian church, 
like their brethren of the Methodist church, claim their neigh- 
bors' wives and daughters, and appropriate them to their own 
use. They tell us that these women are thei7-s — that they oum 
them. Of course, if they own them, they can do what they loill 
with their own ; and what a clergyman would be likely to do with 
his own women — women over whom he not only possessed unlim- 
ited power, but to whose bodies he had a divine right — those can 
best judge who are acquainted Avith the records of that depart- 
ment' of the Female Moral Reform Society, Avhich treats of the 
licentiousness of the clergy. And what is done by the leaders is 
also done by the people. Thousands of the lay members of this 
church are slave-breeders, whose chief or only source of income 
is the sale of human flesh ! Their plantations are stocked with 
women, members, in part, of the same church, whom they term 
Breeders ; and not a few of them are engaged on an extensive 
scale, in raising boi/s and girls from these breeders, for the rice 
and cotton fields of the far South ; as the Berkshire farmers raise 
cattle and horses for Brighton market ! ! 

But the clergy of this genteel and influential sect have not 
been content with merely upholding slavery by the force of their 
example. Like faithful sentinels on its watch-towers, they were 
the first to descry the dangers of abolition ; and from the com- 
mencement of the anti-slavery enterprise, they have been among 
the most active and energetic in arousing the people to deter- 
mined and obstinate resistance. No sect in the land has done 
more to perpetuate slavery than this. Its deliberate and cold- 
blooded sanction and approval of the slave-system, and its mur- 
derous appeal to the mob to put a stop to the progress of free 
principles by Lynch law, is enough to make one's blood curdle 



44 

in his veins! — But bear them in their own words, recollecting, 
meanwhile, that they claim to be the ministers of Christ, and 
that before them lie 2,700,000 wretched slaves, imploring relief 
at their hands. Here is their answer to the demand of crushed 
humanity for the recognition of its inalienable rights. 

Charleston Union Presbytery : 

Resolved, — 
*• That in the opinion of this Presbyterj'^, the holding of slaves, 
so far from being a si7i iji the sight of God, is nowhere condemned 
in his holy word — that it is in accordance with the example, or 
consistent with the precepts, of patriarchs, apostles, and prophets, 
and that it is compatible with the most fraternal regard to the 
best good of those servants whom God may have committed to 
our charge." 

Harmony Presbytery, South Carolina : 

Eesolved, unanimously, — 

" 1. That, as the kingdom of our Lord is not of this world, his 
church, as such, has no right to abolish, alter, or affect any insti- 
tution or ordinance of men, political and civil merely, &c. 

"2. That slavery has existed from the days of those good old 
slaveholders and patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (who are 
now in the kingdom of heaven), to the time when the apostle Paul 
sent a runaway slave home to his master Philemon, and wrote a 
Christian and fraternal epistle to this slaveholder, which we find 
still stands in the canons of the Scriptures; and that slavery has 
existed ever since the days of the apostle, and does now exist. 

"3. That, as the relative duties of master and slave are taught 
in the Scriptures, in the same manner as those of parent and child, 
and husband and wife, the existence of slavery itself is not opposed 
to the will of God; and whosoever has a conscience too tender to 
recognize this relation as lawful, is 'righteous overmuch,' is ' wise 
above what is written,' and has submitted his neck to the yoke of 
man, sacrificed his Christian liberty of conscience, and leaves the 
infallible word of God for the fancies and doctrines of men." 

Synod of South Carolina and Georgia : 

Resolved, unanimously [Dec, 1834,] — 
"That, in the opinion of this Synod, Abolition Societies, and 
the principles upon which they are founded, in the United States, 
are inconsistent with the interests of the slaves, the rights of the 
holders, and the great principles of our political institutions." 

Rev. Robert N. Anderson, Virginia : 



45 

"To the Sessions of the Presbyterian Congregations within the 
Bounds of West Hanover Pre&bytery : 

"At the approaching stated meeting of our Presbytery, I design 
to ofter a preamble and string of resolutions on the subject of the 
use of wine in the Lord's supper ; and also a preamble and a string 
of resolutions on the subject of the treasonable and abominably 
wicked interference of the Northern and Eastern fanatics ivith our 
political and civil rights, our jyroperty, and our domestic concerns. 
I myself, dear brethren, have no reason to doubt the perfect sound- 
ness of all my clerical brethren of this Presbytery on these sub- 
jects. But you are fully aware that the present state of things 
loudly and imperiously calls for an expression of their views on 
these subjects, and particularly on abolitionism, by all church 
bodies at the South. You are aware also, that oar clergy, whether 
with or without reason, are more suspected by the public than are 
the clergy of other denominations. Now, dear Christian breth- 
ren, I humbly express it as my earnest wish, that you quit your- 
selves like men ; that every congregation send up both to the 
Presbytery and to the Synod the ablest elder it has. The times — 
rely upon it — the times demand it. // there be any stray goat of 
a minister among us, tainted ivith the blood-hound principles of 
abolitionism, let him be ferreted out, silenced, excommunicated, 
and left to the public to dispose of him in other respects. 
" Your aflfectionate brother in the Lord, 

"Egbert N. Anderson." 

Rev. Thomas S. Witherspoon, of Alabama, to the editor of the 
Emancipator : 

"I draw my warrant from the Scriptures of the Old and New 
Testament, to hold the slave in bondage. The principle of hold- 
ing the heathen in bondage is recognized by God." * * ^ * 
" When the tardy process of law is too long in redressing our 
grievances, we of the South have adopted the summary remedy 
of Judge Lynch — and really I think it is one of the most whole- 
some and salutary remedies for the malady of Northern fanati- 
cism that can be applied, and no doubt my worthy friend, the 
editor of the Emancipator and Human Rights, would feel the bet- 
ter of its enforcement, provided he had a Southern administrator. 
I go to the Bible for my warrant in all moral matters." * * * 
'• Let your emissaries dare venture to cross the Potomac, and I 
cannot promise you that their fate will be less than Haman's. 
Then beware how you goad an insulted but magnanimous people 
to deeds of desperation." 

Rev. Wm. S. Plummer, d. d,, Virginia: 

[To the Chairman of a Committee of Correspondence, ap- 



46 

pointed by the citizens of Richmond, to oppose the progress of 
anti-slavery principles at the South.] 

" I have carefully watched the matter from its earliest exist- 
ence, and everythino- I have seen and heard of its character, both 
from its patrons and its enemies, has confirmed nie, beyond re- 
pentance, in the belief that, let the character of abolitionists be 
what it may in the sight of the Judge of all the earth, this is the 
most meddlesome, impudent, reckless, fierce, and wicked excite- 
ment I ever saw. I am willing at any time that the world should 
know that such are my views. A few things are perfectly clear 
to my mind. 

" 1st. The more speedy, united, firm, and solemnly resolute, but 
temperate, the expression of public opinion on this subject in the 
whole South, the better it will be for the North, for slaveholders, 
and generally for the slaves. 

"2d. If abolitionists will set the country in a blaze, it is but 
fair that they should have the first wa^'ming at the fire ^ 

* * * •5t*>-5«- * * -X- * -K- 

"Lastly. Abolitionists are, like infidels, wholly unaddicted to 
martyrdom for opinion's sake. Let them understand that they 
will he caiight, if they come among us, and they will take good 
heed to keep out of our way. There is not one man among tliem 
who has anj' more idea of shedding his blood in this cause, than 
he has of making war on the Grand Turk. Their universal spirit 
is to stand off, and growl and bark at men and institutions, with- 
out daring to march for one moment into their midst, and attack 
them with apostolic fearlessness. 

" With sentiments of great respect, I remain yours, &c,, 

" Wm. S. Plummer " 

I know of no language in the vocabulary which is adequate to 
express the abhorrence, which must be felt by every untainted 
mind towards the authors of the atrocious sentiments contaitied 
in the three last documents, and also towards the church and 
denomination that will sustain them, and palm them upon the 
world as ministers of Christ. What ! has it come to this, that 
pastors of churches and doctors of divinity can not only steal 
their neighbors'' wives, without fear of reproach, but openly ad- 
vocate LYNCH LAW, and that, too, in its most frightful shape, for 
the suppression of free discussion? William S. Plummer is not 
only a doctor of divinity, but one of the most popular ministers 
in all the South. He is at the head of the New School in the 
Presbyterian church, and is a prominent member of the A. B. C. 
F. M. And yet his letter is a direct appeal to the mob to burn 
us ALIVE, if we go among them ! He calls upon the citizens of 
Richmond to react the Vicksburg tragedy! — to '^ catch'''' the 



47 

abolitionists, and give them a ^^ warming at the fire''' ! And this 
call comes to them from the pulpit, and endorsed by every Pres- 
byterian and Congregationalist in the land, for they all recognize 
William S. Plummer as a Christian minister ! These three men 
are execrable murderers, if Christ's definition of murder be the 
true one ; and yet they are of no doubtful standing in the Pres- 
byterian church ! These are the men whose delegates are annu- 
ally received by every Congregational Association in Xew Eng- 
land! 

Rev. Moses Stuart, professor in Andover Theological Seminary, 
Massachusetts : 

[To Rev. Wilbur Fisk, d. d., president of the Wesleyan 
University, Connecticut]. 

"Andover, 10th April, 1837. 

"Rev. and dear sir, — Yours is before me. A sickness of three 
months' standing (typhus fever), in which I have just escaped 
death, and which still confines me to my house, renders it impos- 
sible for me to answer your letter at large. 

" 1. The precepts of the New Testament respecting the de- 
meanor of slaves and their masters, beyond all question, recog- 
nize the existence of slavery. The masters are in part ' believing 
masters,' so that a precept to them, how they are to behave as 
viasters, recognizes that the relation may still exist, sa^'ya fide et 
salva ecclesia(wiihout violating the Christian faith or the church). 
Otherwise, Paul had nothing to do but to cut the band asunder at 
once. He could not lawlully and properly tempoiize with a 
malmn in se (that which is in itself sin). 

"If any one doubts, let him take the case of Paul's sending 
Onesimus ][^ack to Philemon, with an apology for his running 
away, and sending him back to be his servant for life. The rela- 
tion did exist, ma}^ exist. The abuse of it is the essential and fun- 
damental wrong. Not that the theory of slavery is' in itself right. 
No ; ' Love thy neighbor as thyself,' ' Do unto others that which 
ye would that others should do unto you,' decide against this. 
But the relation once constituted and continued, is not such a 
malum iji se as calls for immediate and violent disruption, at all 
hazard. So Paul did not counsel." 

"After all the spouting and vehemence on this subject, which 
have been exhibited, the good old book remains the same — [that 
is, in favor of slavery.] Paul's conduct and advice are still safe 
guides. Paul knew well that Christianity would ultimateh' de- 
stroy slavery, as it certainly will. He knew, too that it would 
destroy monarchy and aristocracy from the earth ; for it is funda- 
mentally a doctrine of true liberty and equality. Yet Paul did 



48 

not expect slavery and monarchy to be ousted in a day ; and gave 
precepts to Christians respecting their demeanor ad interim. 
" With sincere and fraternal regard, 

"Your friend and brother, 

"M. Stuart." 

Rev. Wilbur Fisk, d. d. to a friend : 

"This, sir [referring to the preceding letter], is doctrine that 
will stand, because it is Bible docb^ine. The abolitionists, then, 
are on the wrong course. They have travelled out of their record ; 
and if they would succeed, they must take a different position, 
and approach the subject in a different manner. 

" Kespectfully yours, W. Fisk." 

There are several things in this letter, and the endorsement by 
•Dr. Fisk, which deserve particular attention. 

1. The writer and endorser, at the time of its publication, 
were both engaged in fitting young men for the ministry, and 
the former still occupies the same responsible station. 

2. They were elected to their respective offices by New Eng- 
land ministers ; and no objection has ever been made to their 
retaining their offices on account of their opinions on slavery. 
They may, therefore, be considered as the representatives of the 
New England clergy, on the question of slavery. 

3. The opinions of no clergymen in the country have greater 
weight, in their respective sects, than those of Professor Stuart 
and President Fisk. 

4. Both are united in opposing emancipation ; and they are 
equally responsible for all the sentiments and statements con- 
tained in this letter. 

5. This letter is as full and complete a recognitiorr of slavery 
as any slave-claimant in the land could desire. It expressly says 
" that the relation may exist;" that is, one man may claim and 
use another's wife and children as his property " without violat- 
ing the Christian faith or the church" ! "Slavery," it adds, "did 
exist, may exist ! The abuse of it is the essential and fundament- 
al wrong" ! That is, to convert a man into an article of mer- 
chandise, and exercise unlimited power over him, is not sinful ; 
but whipping him unnecessarily may be. This is the doctrine of 
the letter. 

6. To maintain this doctrine, the letter states a gross and pal- 
pable falseliood. It says that Paul sent Onesimus back to 
Philemon " to be his servant for life." Nothing could be farther 
from the truth than this statement. Had the reverend authors 
of it said that Jesus himself was a slaveholder, they would not 
have been guilty of a greater libel or more horrible blasphemy ! 



49 

Paul's language to Philemon cannot possibly be misunderstood. 
He calls Onesimus his son, and tells Philemon to receive him as 
his " own bowels f that is, as his own offspring. He tells him 
expressly to receive him " not now as a servant, hut above a ser- 
vant, a brother beloved, both in the fiesh and in the Lord.''"' He 
tells him still further, — " Receivehim as Tnyselff that is, as you 
would the great Apostle to the Gentiles ; and he adds, — " If he 
oweth thee aught, put that on my account ; I will repay it." 
And he remarks, in apology for sending back Onesimus, that he 
had perfect confidence in Philemon, that he would do even more 
for him than he had asked. And yet, with this plain and une- 
quivocal statement before them, these distinguished biblical 
scholars have the audacity to tell us, that Paul sent Onesimus 
back " to be a servant for life !" Alas ! to what lengths slave- 
claimants and their abettors will go, in supporting their horrible 
system ! They will beat, imprison, and burn abolitionists, and 
lie, and blaspheme the God of Heaven, in its defence ! We have 
here, in immediate connection, five clergymen, three of them 
publicly advocating lynch law ; and the remaining two publishing 
to the world the most glaring and libellous falsehoods, for the 
purpose of destroying the remnant of sympathy which is still felt 
for the helpless victims of their power ! 

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES, OLD AND NEW 

SCHOOL. 

The course pursued by these bodies on the subject of slavery 
is a fac simile of that adopted by the United States Congress. 
They have never taken any action on the subject in favor of 
emancipation, and have generally succeeded in preventing a full 
discussion of it ; although it has at times crept in, and caused 
them no little trouble. This, however, is nothing more than was 
to be expected of bodies composed mainly of man-stealers, and 
those who legalize man-stealing. Indeed, ecclesiastical action 
against slavery, while their character remains what it now is, is 
not to be desired. 

The first thing which they can do for the slave, is to " repent 
and be converted," and become abolitionists indeed. Till then, 
the adoption of resolutions against slavery would only render 
them more dangerous and formidable enemies of the cause of 
freedom, since it would enable them the more eifectually to de- 
ceive and beguile many of its honest, but less discerning, friends. 

I might go into an extended narration of their proceedings, but 
they are too barren of interest to warrant the trouble. Suffice 
it to say, that while they refused, at their late meetings, to pass 
3 



50 

any censure on slaveholding, tlie old school pronounced a man 
guilty of " INCEST," and deposed him from the ministry, for mar- 
rying the sister of his deceased wife ; and the new bore a formal 
and very solemn testimony against dancing, as a sin not to be 
tolerated in the church ! 

What would be thought of the Bey of Tunis, or the Sultan, 
should he enact a law prohibiting dancing in his dominions, as a 
crime, and at the same time allow one class of his subjects to 
enslave and imbrute another, or sell them in the market, — as the 
executors of the late Rev. Dr. Furman, president of the Baptist 
Triennial Convention, recently sold twenty-seven native Ameri- 
cans under the hammer of the auctioneer, with his " theological 
library, two nudes, one horse, and an old wagon" ? Such a 
demonstration of barbarism in a Mahometan prince would ex- 
cite the astonishment and indignation of all Christendom. But 
in Christian " divines^'' it is all well enough. At least, the great 
body of the people think so. Coming as it does from their 
priests, it is to them all gospel. 

But it is due to the Bey of Tunis (the man whom our Ameri- 
can clergy look upon as a heathen, and to whom they are now 
sending missionaries), to say, In this connection, that he has not 
only not enacted a law against the very harmless amusement of 
dancing (David and the old prophets danced), but that he has 
enacted a law prohibiting slaveholding in his dominions. Let 
the clergy of our country read the following letter from him to 
the British residents at Gibraltar If it does not raise a blush 
upon their cheeks, it will be because they are lost to all sense of 
shame : 

Translation. 

" Praise be to God ! 

"From the servant of God, Musheer Ahmed Bashaw Bey, Sov- 
ereign Prince of the dominions of Tunis, to the perfectly honored 
Englishmen, united together for the amelioration of the human 
race. — May God honor them ! 

" We have received the letter which you have forwarded to us, 
by the honored and reverend Richardson, congratulating us upon 
the measures* that we have adopted for the glory of mankind, to 
distinguish them from the brute creation. 

" Your letter has filled us with joy and satisfaction. 

"May God aid us in our efforts — may he enable us to accom- 
plish the objects of our hopes — and may he accept this our work ! 

" May you live continually under the protection of God Al- 
mighty ! 

"Given at Tunis, 26th day Elhojah, 1257. [7th Feb., 1842.]" 

♦The abolition of slavery throughout his dominions. 



51 

THE BAPTIST CHURCH. 

This church contains nearly 1,000,000 members, not far from 
100,000 of whom are in slavery, and many of them the goods 
and chattels of their own ministers, and brethren. In territory, 
it embraces the whole Union ; but its members are most numer- 
ous at the South. The different congregations or churches are 
independent of each other in regard to ecclesiastical jurisdiction ; 
but they are all united in one body, through their state and other 
local associations, and a General Convention, which meets once 
in three years, and under whose direction the foreign missionary 
operations of the church are carried on.. Besides the General 
Convention, there is also a Baptist Home Mission Society, and 
an American and Foreign Bible Society, in which all the differ- 
ent sections of the country are represented, and through which 
the bond of union and fellowship between the local churches is 
strengthened, and rendered more apparent to the world. 

The communion table of each of the churches is free to all the 
others, except in a few cases where resolutions have been adopt- 
ed, excluding slaveholders (slave-claimants) ; but these churches 
invite to their table those who commune with Southern man- 
stealers, so that their connection with them is unbroken. No 
church has yet severed itself from the slaveholding body ; and 
hence all who are connected with any one of them, are members 
of that body, and responsible for its acts ; nor is there any essen- 
tial difference in the moral condition of the different members, 
for the same blood which Hows about the heart circulates into 
the most distant extremity of every limb. No church has 
espoused the anti-slavery cause in opposition to the body, and 
demanded its division. In this regard the North and South are 
essentially alike. In both, slavery finds warm friends and firm 
supporters. In both, there are also those who desire its aboli- 
tion, but whose desires are not sufficiently strong to induce them 
to separate from a slaveholding^ church. They love their church 
organization, corrupt as it is, better than they love the cause of 
the bleeding slave. Hence they cling to it, and oppose the 
genuine abolitionists, who go for entire separation from slave- 
breeders and their Northern abettors. 

Soon after the last Triennial Convention, a Provisional For- 
eign Mission Committee was appointed by the disaffected Bap- 
tist ministers of the New Organization, for the ostensible pur- 
pose of carrying on a system of missionary operations among the 
heathen, disconnected with slavery ; but it proved to be a mere 
trick of the clergy, to c^uiet the anti-slavery agitation. All the 
movers of it are, to this day, in full fellowship with the Baptist 



52 

church or denomination, as a Christian body ; and that church is 
made up, mainly, of slave-claimants and those who legalize 
slavery. And besides, a large sum of money that was raised 
from abolitionists, on condition that it should not be mingled 
with the blood-stained contributions of the South, was appro- 
priated to the use of the old man-stealing board, as will appear 
from the following resolution, unanimously adopted at the first, 
or an early meeting of the Provisional Foreign Mission Com- 
mittee : — 

" Whereas the Foreign Mission Board have recently sustained 
a heavy loss by the failure of their banker at Calcutta, and thus 
appropriated supplies are cut off from the missionaries In Asia : 
Therefore, 

" Resolved, — 

" That the treasurer of this committee be instructed to forward, 
as soon as possible, five hundred dollars, from funds now in the 
treasury, to the relief of the missionaries, to be expended under 
the direction of Dr. Judson and Mr. Vinton. 

''Simon G. Shipley, Chairman. 

"Charles W. Dennison, Recording Secretary." 

A second missionary association has recently been formed by 
a portion of the same disaffected members, called the American 
and Foreign Baptist Missionary Society ; but it is only another 
limb of the old man-stealing Baptist body. The leaders in it are 
still in Christian fellowship with Urs Sharp, Bolles, and Way- 
land, and Hon. Richard Fletcher, all of whom are officers of the 
old board ; and also with the Baptists generally of the North, 
who legalize slavery. The organization of these new missionary 
associations is only a family qvarrel, and not a division in the 
family. But the case is one which demands separation, like that 
which took place in the Congregational church when a portion 
of it embraced the Unitarian faith. 

The last General Convention of the Baptist church was char- 
acterized by base servility to the slave power, and utter recre- 
ancy to every principle of Christianity. The North and South 
there met together in loving fellowship, to advance the kingdom 
of the Redeemer. Every section of the church was fully repre- 
sented. The slave-claimant, the Northern apologist of slavery, 
and the New Organizationist, were all there, and sat down to- 
gether. They took the object of their meeting into "•prayerful 
consideration^'''' and invoked the divine blessing upon it. But — 
O, tell it not in Algiers ! — their first act was to choose a thief 
to preside over their deliberations. Subsequently, another thief 
was selected to preach the sermon ; and yet another to make the 



53 

prayer preparatory to the election of the Missionary Board ; and 
he, doubtless, prayed to the God of thieves ; for their next act 
was to drop the venerable Elon Galusha from the board, and 
elect a fourth thief to fill his place ! And to close the farce they 
united over the communion table in singing the hymn beginning 
with the following lines : — 

" Lo, what an entertaining sight 
Arc brethren who agree !" 

Such was the character of the last Triennial Convention. And 
yet the New-Organized Baptist ministers, who had separated 
from the American Anti-Slavery . Society because women were 
allowed to stand upon its platform, saw no occasion to withdraw 
from it. They could participate in a Baptist Convention whose 
president was a man-stealing doctor of divinity ; but they could 
not remain in an anti-slavery meeting, where women were per- 
mitted to speak. Alas, how true it is that a sectarian cannot 
be an honest man ! But I am consuming too much time with my 
own remarks. I will let the Baptists speak for themselves. They 
can tell their own story better than I can tell it. 

Rev. Wm. H. Brisbane, corresponding secretary of the Amer- 
ican and Foreign Baptist Missionary Society (formerly a slave- 
owner) : — 

"As a body, the Baptists of this country are still united in sup- 
porting, directly or indirectly, slavery and slave-trading, and, by 
consequence, all of its terrible evils. Baptists who have no slaves 
themselves are in intimate communion with those who have them. 
A very considerable proportion of Baptist ministers are slave- 
holders, and yet they have free access to the pulpits in almost 
every part of our common country ; yea, they administer, often- 
times by invitation of those who possess no slaves, the sacred ele- 
ments of the Lord's supper. In the Baptist General Convention, 
for the thirty years of its organization, slaveholders and non-slave- 
holders have met in common fellowship. Its presidents have, 
for the most part, been slaveholders." 

Rev. Lucius Bolles, d. d., corresponding secretary of the 
American Baptist Board of Foreign Missions : — 

"There is a pleasing degree of union among the multiplying 
thousands of Baptists throughout the land. Brethren from all 
parts of the country meet in one general convention, and cooper- 
ate in sending the gospel to the heathen. Our Southern brethren 
are liberal and zealous in the promotion of every holy enterprise 
for the extension of the gospel. They are generally, both ministers 
and people, slaveholders." 



54 

The Baptist man-thieves of the South are liberal and zealous 
in the promotion of every holy enterprise, forsooth ! ! So says 
a leading D. D. of the Baptist church of the North. And he 
tell us, further, that there is a pleasing degree of union between 
these man-stealers and the multiplying thousands of Baptists 
throughout the land ! This is doubtless true ; but to ivhom is 
this union pleasing ? Not, surely, to the despairing slave ; nor 
to God, who can himself, of course, have no possible union with 
thieves, although they may be very good Baptists and Baptist 
ministers. But it is pleasing to the slave-master, and to the 
Baptist clergy generally ; and it is doubtless pleasing to their 
father. Slavery is greatly strengthened by it ; and whatever 
strengthens that institution, cannot be otherwise than pleasing 
to him. 

Rev. W. B. Johnson, d. d., of South Carolina, president of 
the last General Convention : — 

" When, in any country, slavery has become a part of its set- 
tled policy, the inhabitants, even Christians, may hold slaves with- 
out ci'ime." 

Rev. Daniel Sharp, Massachusetts, to Rev. Otis Smith : 

^'hi regard to church action in the case I consider it both i^iex- 
pedient and unsc7nptural. There were, uyidouhtedly , both slave- 
holders and slaves in the primitive churches. I, therefore, for one, 
do not feel myself at liberty to make conditions of cotnmunion which 
neither Christ nor his apostles made. I do not consider myself 
wiser or better than they were. Nor have I yet made such prog- 
ress in knowledge as to believe that a good end sanctifies unjusti- 
fiable means. I believe that a majority of the wisest and best 
men at the North hold to these sentiments. But if 1 stood alone, 
here I shall remain immovable, unless I gain some new light, 
which, at my period of life, I do not expect. 
" 1 am yours truly, 

" Daniel Sharp." 

Rev. R. Furman, d. d., South Carolina, to the governor of the 
state, 1833 :— 

" The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy 
Scriptures, both by precept and example." 

On the death of Dr. F., which occurred soon after, among the 
property advertised by his executor to be sold at public auction, 
was a " library of miscellaneous character, chiefly theological, 
twenty-seven negroes, some of them very prime, two mules, one 
horse, and an old wagon." Query — Were any of the Negroes, 



55 

whom Dr. Furman left at his death, to be sold at auction with 
his mules and horse, his own children ? I am much inclined to 
think they were. For the doctor derives his sanction for hold- 
ing slaves from the " example" of the patriarchs ; and if my 
memory serves me, they made concubines of their handmaids. I 
know of no good reason why their example should not serve in 
the one case, as well as in the other. Nor will the revelations 
which have been made within the past few years Avarrant me in 
thinking that our modern doctors of divinity would be less likely 
to imitate the example of Abraham, in the use which he made of 
his property, Hagar, than in his claim to her, as such. I know 
nothing of the private habits of Dr. Furman, but he was a slave- 
holder and an advocate of slavery ; and I have already shown 
that every slaveholder is an adulterer ; nay, that he is guilty of a 
crime of a much deeper dye. I should be afraid to trust a friend 
of mine in the company of any man who would sell, or hold, her, 
or any other woman, as a slave ! Such a man is a libertine at 
heart, and has not the least possible regard for female chastity ; 
otherwise he could never consent to see, much less to hold, any 
of the sex in the helpless and unprotected condition of a slave. 
It is proper to add that Dr. Furman was president of the Baptist 
General Convention a short time previous to his death. 

The Charleston Baptist Association (extract of an Address to 
the Legislature of South Carolina) : 

" The question, it is believed, is purely one of political economy. 
It amounts, in eflfect, to this — Whether the operatives of a country 
shall be bought and sold, and themselves become 'property, as in this 
state ; or whether they shall be hirelings, and their labor only be- 
come property , as in some other states ; in other words, whether 
an employer may buy the whole time of labjrers at once, of those 
who have a right to dispose of it, with a permanent relation of 
protection and care over them, or whether he shall be restricted to 
buy it in certain portions only, subject to their control, and with 
no such permanent relation of care and protection. TJie right of 
masters to dispose of the time of their slaves has been distinctly 
recognized by the Creator of all things, who is surely at liberty to 
vest the right of property over any object in whomsover he 
pleases. That the lawful possessor should retain this right at 
will, is no more against the laws of socieL}^ and good morals, than 
that he should retain the personal endowments with which his 
Creator has blessed him, or the money and lands inherited from 
his ancestors, or acquired by his industn\" 

What will the working men and women of the North say to 
this doctrine of the Baptist clergy that " the operatives of a 
country shall be bought and sold, and themselves become ^rop- 



56 

er^y" ? At tke South, many of the Baptist brethren are the prop- 
erty of their priests : are the Northern brethren ready to be- 
come the property of theirs ? Dr. Bolles and Dr. Sharp, who are 
now enjoying "a pleasing degree of union'^ with this same Charles- 
ton Baptist Association, would doubtless be glad to oivn some of 
them. They are now nothing but " hirelings," in the estima- 
tion of the Charleston Association: would it not suit as well, if 
a slight change were made in their relations, so that, instead of 
being " hirelings,'''' as at present, they should become the prop- 
erty of their employers ? I am amazed that any working man or 
woman in the country can look upon the Baptist church with any 
other feelings than those of abhorrence and alarm ! These min- 
isters would sell every soul of them into slavery, if they had the 
power to do it ; for they have no more regard for their rights 
and liberty, than they have for those they now hold in bondage. 
The Goslien Association, Virginia : — 

Kesolved, — 

" 1. That we consider our right and title to this property 
[slaves] altogether legal and bona fide, and that it is a breach of 
the faith pledged in the Federal Constitution, for our Northern 
brethren to try, either directly or indirectly, to lessen the value 
of this property, or impair our title thereto." 
Resolved, — 

"2. That we view [in the movements of the abolitionists] the 
torch of the incendiary, and the dagger of the midnight assassin, 
loosely concealed under the specious garb of humanity and relig- 
ion, falsely so called." 

The Savannah River Baptist Association, in reply to the 
question, — 

" Whether, in the case of involuntary separation, of such a 
character as to preclude all prospect of future intercourse, the 
parties ought to be allowed to marry again." 

Answer, — ■ 

" That such separation among persons situated as our slaves are, 
is civilly a separation by death, and they believe that, in the sight 
of God, it would be so viewed. To forbid second marriages in such 
cases, would be to expose the parties, not only to stronger hard- 
ships and strong temptation, but to church censure, for acting in 
obedience to their masters, who cannot be expected to acquiesce 
in a regulation at variance with justice to the slaves, and to the 
spirit of that command which regulates marriage among Chris- 
tians. The slaves are not free agents, and a dissolution by death 
is not more entirely without their consent, and beyond their con- 
trol, by such separation." 



57 

Hung be the heavens in sackcloth ! — Let the sun hide his face 
in darkness, as when the infatuated Jews nailed the Son of God 
to the cross ! — and let there be a jubilee in Hell ! — What have 
we here ? An ecclesiastical decision which sets the authority of 
Jehovah at nought, and blots out the heaven-ordained institution 
of marriage among 2,700,000 of our own countrymen ! — the de- 
cree of a council of Baptist clergymen in favor of second mar- 
riages, whilst both the parties to the original are still living!! 
These vile hypocrites are not satisfied with tearing asunder the 
loving pair whom God has joined in holy wedlock, and forcing 
them to take to their bosoms other companions whom they can- 
not love, and should not, if they could ; but they must make God 
accessory to the infernal deed. They gravely tell us, that he 
regards it as "a separation by death,'''' and, of course, that he 
will hold them guiltless. This is the religion of the Baptist 
church ! These are the men with whom Dr. Bolles assures us 
the multiplying thousands of Baptists throughout the country are 
enjoying a pleasing degree of union. 

If there be a God in heaven who takes cognizance of the 
actions of men, and if there be in reserve a place of punishment 
for the guilty, where every one shall receive his due reward, I 
think the day of final retribution must be a trying one to the 
Baptist church. No crime was ever perpetrated by depraved 
mortals which, as a body, they have not sanctioned. They have 
wrested the sceptre of dominion from the hand of .Tehovah, abro- 
gated his law, and made themselves the supreme sovereigns of 
thousands of his children, whose bodies and souls they have con- 
verted into merchandise, and now offer for sale in market with 
the neighing horse and lowing ox. 

They have annihilated the'sacred institution of marriage, and 
legalized adultery and rape in their most odious and hateful 
forms, making thousands of the female members of their own 
church the Breeders on their plantations, whose offspring are 
torn from them with as little reluctance as the calf is torn from 
the cow ! — Their crimes would put Atheism itself to the blush. 
Did ever Thomas Paine or Abner Kneeland advocate forced 
concubinage ? Did they ever contend for man's right to unlim- 
ited power over woman ? But this is advocated by the Baptist 
church. Slavery is nothing but a system of forced concubinage 
and adultery! It gives woman up into the power of her owner, 
to do with her as he pleases ! Thousands of the Baptists of this 
country claim, and exercise^ this power over the female sex ; and 
more than nine tenths of the remainder authorize their claim and 
assist them to maintain it. 

Can any woman in the Baptist church be pure in heart? I 
3* 



58 

think not, if she possess sufficient intelligence to understand 
the nature of her church relations. She is an adulteress at 
heart; otherwise she could not fellowship a church which had 
annihilated the marriage institution, and thrown a million of her 
sisters into the market for purposes of prostitution. By her fel- 
lowship of slaveholders, she shows that she has, at heart, no 
abhorrence of an adulterous connection ; and if she is herself 
kept from it, it is only by the force of external circumstances. 
If Jeremiah could say of the Jewish church in his day, that they 
were " all adulterers,^'' with how much more force and propriety 
may this charge be brought against the Baptist church, whose 
most distinguished ministers "have given a boy for a harlot, 
and sold a girl for wine, that they might drink ! " nay to have 
even sold girls for loine for their communion table ! ! — But I 
must leave this painful picture, and turn to 

THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 

Of this church I have little to say ; for, from the very nature 
of its organization, and the character of the elements of which it 
is composed, it is the very last of all the sects to which any cause 
of reform should look for aid. From the commencement of our 
enterprise, it has been an inveterate enemy of abolition, and has 
thrown its entire influence, as a body, into the scale of slavery. 
Among its members have been found a few sterling abolitionists, 
but fewer probably, in proportion to its whole numbers, than in 
any other denomination. I believe the first instance of the open- 
ing its meeting-houses for anti-slavery lectures is yet to be re- 
corded ; and if, in its ecclesiastical capacity, it has done less to 
sustain slavery, by positive action in its favor, than some of the 
other sects, it has not been for want of love for the system, but 
from its haughty and dignified indifference to all matters of gen- 
eral interest. Many of its ministers and members are slave- 
claimants, and nearly all of them legalize slavery, and strenu- 
ously oppose its abolition in the District of Columbia ; and in 
abusive treatment of people of color, they have, if possible, 
rivalled even the Methodist church. 

Some idea of the spirit which pervades this body towards that 
portion of our countrymen to whom God has given a complexion 
differing from ours, may be gathered from the following ex- 
tracts from a recent work from the pen of Judge Jay, himself 
a Churchman, entitled "Caste and Slavery in the American 
Clmrch." 

Mr. Jay says : — 



59 

" In the month of June, 1839, the Board of Trustees of the 
General Theological Seminary, composed of the bishops and cler- 
ical and lay delegates from the different states and territories, 
met at New York ; and their proceedings were subsequently pub- 
lished in a pamphlet. From the minutes, it appears that a can- 
didate for holy orders in the diocese of New York, now the Eev. 
Alexander Crummell, applied to them, by petition, to be 
allowed to enter the seminary as a student; that the petition was 
referred to a committee consisting of the Kight Kev. Bp. H. U. 
Onderdonk, Rev. Drs. James Milnor and Hugh Smith, and 
Wm. Johnson, Dayid B. Ogden, and Edward A. Newton, 
Esquires, who, after deliberate consideration, recommended a res- 
olution of rejection, which, on the motion of the Rev. Francis 
L. Hawkes, d. d., was adopted ; that the Right Rev. Bishop 
DoANE asked leave to enter his protest against the decision, and 
that leave was not granted. Neither the reasons for their deci- 
sion, nor the disqualification of the candidate, are even intimated 
by the minutes ; but it does appear, that the right of every can- 
didate for orders to enter the seminary was expressly guaranteed 
by the constitution, which the trustees were bound to obey ; and 
that this fact was well known to them, also appears from an 
amendment proposed by the bishop of New York, while the mat- 
ter was pending, to the very clause upon which they were tram- 
pling. 

" The true cause which led the trustees to nullify the constitu- 
tion and deny the right of the candidate, and which they were 
ashamed to acknowledge, was, that he was a colored man; and 
this was the only cause — his diocesan. Bishop Onderdonk, of New 
York, having declared in 'The Churchman' (Nov. 4. 1839), 
thot he explicitly stated to them, 'that if they should think it 
right and proper to admit a colored man into the Seminary, he 
considered the applicant before them one in whose case it might 
loith great safety and projyriety be done.'' 

"The Rev. Peter Williams, for many years a respectable cler- 
gyman of New York, was never allowed to sit as a member of 
the Diocesan Convention, nor has the Church of St. Philip, of 
which he was the pastor, been yet represented in that body. He 
died soon after the act of the trustees, upon which we have been 
remarking, was exposed to the world ; and to counteract, as far 
as possible, the indignation it had excited, the clergy in a body, 
attended his funeral, and the bishop of New York pronounced 
from the pulpit a high eulogium upon his character. Several of 
the clergy admitted that it was done merely for effect, and one of 
them bitterly remarked at the funeral, that the empty honors to 
the lifeless dust were a poor atonement for the insults so often 
offered to the living man. The Rev. Mr. DeGrasse, another col- 
ored clergyman of the Episcopal church, of fi.ne talents, excellent 
acquirements, and amiable disposition, — who, three years previ- 



60 

ously to the application of Mr. Crummell, had been excluded 
from the Seminary, and who, after a residence of some years in 
this city, sought in the West Indies the respectful treatment and 
sympathy he could not find at home, and there ended his early 
years by a Christian's death, — once said to the writer, with tears 
in his eyes, ' I feel that the bishop and many of the clergy are 
against us — that they do not want any colored clergymen in the 
church. I have struggled against the conviction, but it is impos- 
sible to resist it; the proofs are too strong ; I experience it daily; 
I know it is so ' 

" In the diocese of Pennsylvania, an express canon debars the 
African church from being represented in the Convention, and 
excludes the rector from a seat. Truly ! a singular picture to be 
exhibited by Christians meeting as a council of the church ; but 
the limits of caste stop not here. Beautifully says the poet — 

'Are we not brothers ? 
So man and man should be ; 
But clay and clay differs in dignity, 
Whose dust is both alike.' 

" Since Shakspeare wrote, even the dust has learned to claim 
precedence over dust; and iVo^i me tang ere is daintily inscribed 
upon the mouldering coffin-lid. 

"Ay! this 'aristocracy of color' is maintained not only in 
God's temples, but even in that last abode where all distinctions 
have been supposed to disappear. In the very graveyard where 
Death reigns as conqueror, and worms revel on the mouldering 
remains of manliness and beauty; where pride, and pomp, and 
power, have doffed their trappings, and have said to corruption. 
Thou art my father, and to the worms. Thou art my mother and 
my sister ; where the voice of passion is forever stilled, and the 
heart that has ceased to beat is as cold as the marble beneath 
which it reposes; — even here, among the tombs. Prejudice has 
his dwelling, like the demoniac of old, and Caste, under the sanc- 
tion of the church, rears its hideous and revolting form. How 
many similar instances there may be, we know not; that we cite 
has come under our immediate notice. The vestry and wardens 
of an Episcopal church in the diocese of New York, a few years 
since, accepted a deed for a cemetery, which was demised to 
them upon the express condition embodied in the indenture, 
* that they should never suffer any colored jjerson to be buried in 
any 'part of the same; ' and all the subsequent conveyances on the 
part of the church, of vaults and burial-places, are subject to the 
same conditions." 



61 

THE UNITARIAN AND UNIVERSALIST CHURCHES. 

Whoever has bestowed an hour^s serious reflection on the 
nature and tendency of ecclesiastical institutions, will see that 
these churches have much less power to harm any work of re- 
form, than those sects which are called evangelical. From the 
looseness of their organization, and the Anti-Pharisaic character 
of their professions, their ecclesiastical influence is comparatively 
limited, either for good or for evil. Their influence is more 
that of the individual ; and in relation to slavery, they stand 
much nearer the position of non-church communicants, than do 
the other sects. But still they have an ecclesiastical existence 
and, of course, some ecclesiastical influence; and that influence, 
however trifling it may have been, has all been given in support 
of slavery. As a body, they have given the anti-slavery cause 
no countenance. The least that can in truth be said of them is, 
that, ecclesiastically, they have walked in the footsteps of the 
priest and the Levite, straight by the poor, bleeding slave, on 
the other side, or have turned aside only to cast a cold and 
heartless look upon his wretchedness ; while in the capacity of 
citizens, they have joined his oppressors, and assisted in strip- 
ping him of his rights, and plundering his domestic hearthstone. 
And as they profess to be Christians, and members of the church 
of Christ, and at the same time legalize slavery and the slave 
trade, and also fellowship slave-claimants as Christians, there is 
no essential difference between them and the other sects. They 
are all under the same condemnation, and are alike the enemies 
of truth and impartial freedom. 

THE FREE-WILL BAPTISTS AND THE SOCIETY OF 

FRIENDS. 

These sects, like all the others, when weighed in the balance 
of truth, are found wanting. As bodies, they claim to be anti- 
slavery ; but their claim is like that of the Pharisee, who thanked 
God that he was not like that publican who stood by his side, 
when at the same time he was the more guilty of the two. It is 
true that they have spoken against slavery ; and spoken, too, in 
strong terms of reprobation ; but it is equally true, that with 
both hands they have upheld it ; and they now stand before the 
world in a more reprehensible light than any of the other sects. 
From motives of self interest, or an unwillingness to depart from 
a rule introduced by their fathers, they admit no slave-claimant 
to their fellowship ; but at the same time, as a body, they stand 
entirely aloof from the anti-slavery enterprise, or openly oppose 



62 

it. And while sending forth to the world their resolutions and 
testimonies against slavery, they legalize it, and do whatever 
lies in their power to render it popular, and consequently perma- 
nent, by electing man-stealers to till the highest offices in the 
government. At the ballot-box, no sect in the land is more no- 
toriously subservient to the slave power than the Free-Will Bap- 
tists. 

In New Hampshire, where they are very numerous, they are 
principally connected with the Democratic party ; and it was 
chiefly through their instrumentality, that that poor apology for 
a man, Charles G. Atherton, was returned to Congress, after 
having disgraced himself and his country by consenting to be 
made a cat's-paw by Southern slave-hreeders , to tear in pieces 
the sacred right of petition ! It was in their power to prevent 
his reelection, and return to Congress a thorough-going aboli- 
tionist in his stead ; but he was the man of their choice ! And 
yet, at this very time, they were passing llaming resolutions 
against slavery, and making loud professions of abolitionism ! 

I have said that the American church and clergy, as a body, 
were Pirates. Is this charge true, so far as it relates to the 
Free-Will Baptists and Quakers? It \s, \i aiding and abetting 
pirates, and protecting them while engaged in perpetrating their 
atrocities, constitutes one a pirate ; for both of these sects legal- 
ize and protect a species of commerce in the United States, 
which they have declared to be piracy, when carried on upon the 
coast of Africa. Am I told that they have acted ignorantly in 
this matter ? My reply is, if they are men of common-sense, 
they must and do know that voting for slave-claimants and the 
advocates and supporters of slavery to legislate for the country, 
tends to perpetuate the bloody system. Would they vote for 
such men if their own wives and children were in slavery ? So 
long as they are connected with slaveholding political parties, 
their resolutions and testimonies against slavery only serve to 
enhance their guilt, and aggravate their condemnation. 

If the government had instituted a system of idol worship, and 
a hundred oxen were daily offered in sacrifice on the altar of 
some distinguished god, in the city of Washington, by an order 
of Congress, what would you say of that religious sect, who 
should pass resolves against idolatry, and at the same time vote 
for men to represent them in Congress who were opposed to the 
abolition of these sacrifices, and also elect a high-priest of this 
deity to fill the presidential chair? But such conduct would not 
be more hypocritical and reprehensible than the conduct of the 
Free-Will Baptists and Friends, and the other religious bodies 
that have adopted resolutions against slavery ! 



63 

The remarks which I have made upon the Free-Will Baptists 
and Friends, will apply with equal force to those branches of 
other sects which have adopted resolutions against slavery. This 
kind of action, so long as they stand connected with pro-slavery 
parties, either political or ecclesiastical, only renders their influ- 
ence more formidable to the anti-slavery enterprise ; and conse- 
quently their guilt is proportionably increased. They tell us 
that slavery is a heinous sin and crime, and yet act in concert 
with those who advocate and uphold it ! Hence, on their own 
confession, they are the " companions of thieves,'''' and in fellow- 
ship with adulterers. In my general charges, therefore, against 
the sects, no exception is required in favor of those local churches 
which claim to be anti-slavery, on the ground of having adopted 
anti-slavery resolutions, while they are still connected with their 
respective sectarian denominations, and in Christian fellowship 
with those who act in concert with pro-slavery political parties. 
The least that can in truth be said of such churches is, that they 
are the lukewarm friends of the slave, whom God will spew out 
of his mouth. 

I had intended to speak, in this connection, of the character 
and tendency of our so-called benevolent institutions ; but hav- 
ing already far exceeded the limits which I originally proposed 
to myself in this letter, I must pass them by with the single re- 
mark, that connected with the Boards of most of them are more 
or less slave-claimants, and their treasuries are polluted with the 
price of human blood ! — and that the money which our clergy beg 
of poor widows to send the gospel to the heathen, goes into the 
hands of such men as Rev. Wm. S. Plummer, d. d., the man 
who called upon the Richmond mob to " catch" the abolitionists 
and give them a " warming at the fire ! " For the same rea- 
son, I have also omitted to notice several of the smaller religious 
denominations. I would here say of them, however, that they 
are all composed of sectarians, and not abolitionists ; and hence 
they belong to the same category with the larger and more influ- 
ential sects, and should be regarded in a similar light. 

But I trust I have already adduced abundant evidence on this 
heart-rending subject, to substantiate ray allegations against the 
American church and clergy. With this picture before him, no 
one, I think, will say that I have done them injustice. True, I 
have brought against them the most tremendous charges ! I have 
denounced them, as a body, as thieves, adulterers, man- 
STEALERS, PIRATES, and MURDERERS ! But who, in view of the 
frightful and accumulated proof of their guilt, which I have here 
presented, can deny these charges ? Who, that has a mind ca- 
pable of understanding the political and ecclesiastical connection 



64 

of the church and clergy with the slave system, as I have here 
portrayed it, and can comprehend the direful consequences of 
that connection, will dare to say that God will hold them guilt- 
less of these crimes ? Gladly would I believe them innocent ; 
but reason, conscience, and my outraged sense of justice, all 
forbid the thought. 

I will close this part of my argument with a few specimens of 
the fruits of slavery, as it exists in the midst, and under the con- 
trol, of the religious influences of the country. As your eye 
glances over the horvible picture which I am about to present, 
bear in mind that it is the legitimate and inevitable result of the 
system which the church and clergy generally not only legalize, 
but baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of 
the Holy Ghost. It is heart-rending, indeed, to see humanity 
thus mangled and bruised ; but so it must ever be until slavery 
itself shall be abolished ; for it cannot exist without the exercise 
of the most horrible cruelties. It is only in the presence of 
whips, and chains, and branding-irons, that the slave will submit 
to his degraded condition. 

The following advertisejnents are from Southern newspapers, 
and are only a very few of the many thousands of similar ones, 
which blacken the columns of the Southern press : 

"Committed to jail as a runaway, a negro woman named 
Martha, 17 or 18 years of age — ha.> numerous sca7'S of the whip on 
her back." D. Judd, Jailor, Davidson County, Tenn. 

"Ten dollars reward for my woman Siby, very much scarred 
about the neck and ears by whipping." 

KoBERT NiCHOLL, Mobile, Ala. 

" Ran away, a negro woman, named Maria — some scars on her 
back, occasioned by the whip.''' 

Bryant Johnson, Fort Valley, Houston County, Ga. 

"Stolen, a negro woman, named Celia — on examining her 
back, you will find marks caused by the whip." 

James T. DeJarnett, Vernon, Autauga County, Tenn. 

"Lodged in jail, a mulatto boy, having large marks of the whip 
on his shoulders and other parts of his body." 

Maurice V. Garcia, 
Sheriflfof the County of Jefferson, La. 

"Was committed, a negr© boy named Tom — is much marked 
rvith the whi]]." J ■ 

R. J. Bland, Sheriff of Claiborne County, Miss. 



65 

" Ran away a negro fellow named Dick — has many scars on his 
back from being whipped." 

James Noe, Red River Landing, La. 

"Committed to jail, a negro slave; his back is very badly 
scarred." William Craze, Jailor, Alexandria, La. 

" Committed a mulatto fellow — his back shows lasting impres- 
sions of the whip, and leaves no doubt of his being a slave." 

John A. Rowland, Jailor, Lumberton, N. C. 

" Committed to jail, a negro man — his back much tnarked by 
the whip." J. K. Roberts, SheriflF, Blount County, Ala. 

" Ran away, the negro slave named Jupiter — has 'a, fresh rnark 
of a cowskin on one of his cheeks." H. Varillat, N. O. 

" Ran away, a negro man named Johnson — he has a great 
many marks of the whip on his back." 

Cornelius D. Tolin, Augusta, Ga. 

" Ran away, Bill — has several large scars on his back, from 
a severe whipping in early life." 

John Watton, Rockville, Montgomery County, Md. 

*' Ran away, a boy named Jim — with the marks of the whip 
on the small of the back, reaching round to the flank." 

Samuel Stewart, Greensboro', Ala. 

" Brought to Jail, a negro man named George — he has a great 
many scars fj^om, the lash." 

S. B. Murphy, Sheriff, Wilkinson County, Ga. 

"Was committed to jail, a yellow boy named Jim — had on a 
large lock chain around his neck." 

William Toler, Sheriff of Simpson County, Miss. 

" Ran away, a negro named David — with some iron hobbles 
around each ankle." Haslet Loflano, Staunton, Va. 

"Ran away, negress Caroline — had on a collar with one prong 
turned down." T. Enqgy, New Orleans. 

" Ran away, a black woman, Betsey — had an iron bar on her 
right leg" John Henderson, Washington County, Mi. 

"Was committed to jail, a negro named Ambrose — has a ring 
of iron around his neck." 

William Dyer, Sheriff, Claiborne, La. 

"Ran away, a negro man named Charles — had on a draxving 
chain, fastened around his ankle with a house lock." 

Francis Durett, Lexington, Lauderdale County, Ala. 



66 

" Ean away, the negro Manual, much marked with irons.'^ 

A. MuRAT, Baton Eouge. 

"Was committed to jail, a negro boy — had on a large neck 
iron, with a huge pair of horns, and a large bar or hand of iron 
on his left leg." 

H, Gridlet, Sheriff of Adams County, Mi. 

" Ran away, tbe negro George — he had on his neck an iron 
collar, the branches of which had been taken off." 

Ferdinand Lemos, New Orleans. 

" Committed to jail, a man who calls his name John — he has 
a clog of iron on his right foot which will xoeigh four or five 
pounds.'' B. W. Hodges, Jailor, Pike County, Ala. 

"Detained at the police Jail, the negro wench Myra — has sev- 
eral marks of lashing, and has irons on her feet.'" 

P. Bayhi, Captain of the Police. 

Ran away, Betsey — when she left she had on her neck an iron 
collar.'' Charles Kernan, Parish of Jefferson, La. 

"Ran away, a negro woman and two children — a few days be- 
fore she went off / burnt her with a hot iron, on the left side of 
her face : I tried to make the letter M." 

MiCAJAH Rich, Nash County, N. C. 

" Ran away, Mary, a black woman — has a scar on her back 
and right arm near the shoulder, caused by a rifle ball." 

Asa B. Melcalf, Kingston, Adams County, Mi. 

" Ran away, a negro man named Henry, his left eye out, some 
scars from dirk on and under his left arm, and much scarred with 
the whip." 

William Overstreet, Benton, Yazoo Co., Mi. 

" Ran away, Sam — he was shot a short time since through the 
hand, and has several shots in his left arm and side." 

O. W. Lains, Ark. 

" Ran away, my negro man Dennis — said negro has been shot 
in his left arm, between the shoulder and elbow, which has para- 
lyzed the left hand." R. W. Sizer, Mi. 

" Ran away, my negro man named Simon — he has been shot 
badly in his back and right arm." 

Nicholas Edmunds, Va. 
" Ran away, a negro girl called Mary — has a small scar over 
her eye, a good many teeth missing — the letter A is branded on 
her cheek and forehead." 

J. P. AsHFORD, Adams County, Mi. 



67 

"Committed, a negro man — is very badly shot in the right side 
and right hand." S. B. Murphy, Jailor, Irvington, Ga. 

" Kan away, a negro man named Ned — thi-ee of his fingers are 
drawn into the palm of his hand by a cut — has a scar on the back 
^f his neck nearly half round, done by a knife.^' 

Isaac Johnson, Pulaski county, Ga. 

" Was committed to jail, a negro man — saj-s his name is Josiah,'; 
his back is very much scarred by whip, and branded on the thigh 
and hips, in three or four places^ thus, J. M., — the rim of hts 
right ear has been bit or cut o^." 

J. L. JoLLEY, Sheriff of Clinton County, Mi. 

" Fifty dollars' reward for my fellow Edward — he has a scar 
on the corner of his mouth, two cuts on and under his arm, and 
the letter E on his arm.'''' 

Thomas Ledwith, Jacksonville, East Florida. 

" Kan away, Anthony — one of his ears cut off, and his left hand 
cut with an ax." Stephen M. Jackson. 

" Kan away, Gabriel — has two or three scars across his neck, 
made with a knife." 

Lemuel Miles, Steen's Creek, Kankin County, Mi. 

"Ran away, my man Fountain — has holes in his ears, a scar 
on the right side of his forehead — has been shot in the hind parts 
of his legs — is marked in the back with the whip." 

KoBERT Beasley, Macon, G^. 

"TWENTY DOLLAKS' KEWAKD. Kan away from the 
subscriber, on the 14th instant, a negro girl named Molly. She 
is 16 or 17 years of age, slim made, lately branded on the 
left cheek, thus K, and a piece taken off of her ear on 

the same side ; THE SAME LETTER BRANDED ON THE INSIDE OF 

BOTH HER LEGS." Abner Koss, Fairfield District, S. C. 

The Wilmington (North Carolina) Advertiser, of July 13, 
1838, contains the following advertisement : — 

" Kan away, my negro man Kichard. A reward of $25 will 
be paid for his apprehension, DEAD or ALIVE. Satisfactory 
proof will only be required of his being KILLED. He has with 
him, in all probability, his wife Eliza, who ran away from Col, 
Thompson, now a resident of Alabama, about the time he com- 
menced his journey to that state." D. H. Khodes. 

In the Macon (Georgia) Telegraph, May 28, is the following : — 

'•About the 1st of March last, the negro man Kansom left me 
without the least provocation whatever. I will give a reward of 



68 

$20 for said negro, if taken dead or alive, — and if killed in any 
attempt, an advance of $5 will be paid. 

" Crawford Co., Ga. Bryant Johnson." 

On the 28th of April, 1836, a colored man, named Mcintosh, 
was seized by a mob, in the city of St. Louis, fastened to a tre% 
in the midst of the city, in open day, and burnt to death, in the 
presence of an immense throng of citizens, who had assembled 
to give their countenance to the deed. The Alton (111.) Tele- 
graph contains the following notice of the scene : — 

" All was silent as death while the executioners were piling 
wood around their victim. He said not a word, until feeling that 
the flames had seized upon him. Then he uttered an awful howl, 
attempting to sing and pray, then hung his head, and suffered in 
silence, except in the following instance : After the flames had 
surrounded their prey, his eyes burnt out of his head, and his 
mouth seemingly parched to a cinder, some one in the crowd, 
more compassionate than the rest, proposed to put an end to his 
misery by shooting him, when it was replied, ' That would be of 
no use, since he was already out of pain.' 'No, no,' said the 
wretch, ' I am not. I am suflering as much as ever ; shoot me, 
shoot me.' ' No, no,' said one of the fiends, who was standing 
about the sacrifice they were roasting, 'he shall not be shot. / 
would sooner slacken the fire, if that would increase his misery ; 
and the man who said this, was, as we understand, an officer 

OF JUSTICE." 

The following scene is related by Rev. James A. Thome, son 
of Arthur Thome, of Augusta, Ky. : — 

*'In December of 1833, I landed at New Orleans, in the steamer 

W •. It was after night, dark and rainy. The passengers 

were called out of the cabin, from the enjoyment of a fire, which 
the cold, damp atmosphere rendered very comfortable, by a sud- 
den shout of ' Catch him — catch him — catch the negro.' The cry 
was answered by a hundred voices — ' Catch him — kill him ;' and 
a rush from ever}^ direction toward our boat indicated that the 
object of pursuit was near. The next moment we heard a man 
plunge into the river a few paces above us. A crowd gathered 
upon the shore, with lamps, and stones, and clubs, still crying, 
'Catch him — kill him — catch him — shoot him.' 

" I soon discovered the poor man. He had taken refuge under 
the prow of another boat, and was standing in the water up to his 
waist. The angry vociferation of his pursuers did not intimi- 
date him. He defied them all. 'Don't you dare to come near 
me, or I will sink you in the river.' He was armed with despair. 
For a moment the mob were palsied by the energy of his threat- 
enings. They were afraid to go to him with a skiflF, but a num- 



69 

ber of them went on to the boat, and tried to seize him. They 
threw a noose-ropje down repeatedly that they might pull him up 
by the neck! but he planted his hand firmly against the boat, and 
dashed the rope away with his arms. One of them took a long 
bar of wood, and, leaning over the prow, endeavored to strike 
him on the head. The blow must have shattered the skull, but 
it did not reach low enough. The monster raised up the heavy 
club again, and said, ' Come out now, you old rascal, or die.' 
* Strike,' said the negro ; ' strike— shiver my brains now ; I want 
to die;' and down went the club again, without striking. This 
was repeated several times. The mob, seeing their efforts fruit- 
less, became more enraged, and threatened to stone him, if he did 
not surrender himself into their hands. He again defied them, 
and declared he would drown himself in the river, before they 
should have him. They then resorted to persuasion, and promised 
they would not hurt him. 'I'll die first,' was his. only reply. 
Even the furious mob was awed, and for a while stood dumb. 

" After standing in the cold water for an hour, the miserable 
being began to fail. We observed him gradually sinking — his 
voice grew weak and tremulous — yet he continued to curse ! In 
the midst of his oaths he uttered broken sentence-, — ' I didn't 
steal the meat — I didn't steal— my master lives — master — master 
lives up the river — [his voice began to gurgle in his throat, and 
he was so chilled that his teeth chattered audibly] — I didn't — 
steal — I didn't steal — my — my master — mj^— I want to see my 
master — I didn't — no — my mas — you want — you want to kill 
me — I didn't steal the — ' His last words could just be heard as 
he sank under the water." 

The Natchez Free Trader, of June, 1842, gives the following 
account of the burning of a negro at Union Point, Miss. : — 

" The body was taken and chained to a tree immediately on the 
bank of the Mississippi, on what is called Union Point Fagots 
were then collected, and piled around him, to which he appeared 
quite indifferent When the work was completed, he was asked 
what he had to say. He then warned all to take example by him, 
and asked the prayers of all around ; he then called for a drink 
of water, which was handed to him ; he drank it, and said. 'Now 
set fire — I am ready to go in peace !' The torches were lighted and 
placed in the pile, which soon ignited He watched unmoved 
the curling flame, that grew until it began to entwine itself 
around and feed upon his body ; then he sent forth cries of agony 
painful to the ear, begging some one to blow his brains out; at 
the same time surging with almost superhuman strength, until 
the staple with which the chain was fastened to the tree (not be- 
ing well secured) drew out, and he leaped from the burning pile. 
At that moment the sharp ringing of several rifles was heard ; the 



70 

body of the negro fell a corpse to the ground. He was picked up 
by some two or three, and again thrown into the fire and con- 
sumed — not a vestige remaining to show that such a being ever 
existed. 

State of North Cakolina, \ 
Lenoir County. ( 

" Whereas, complaint hath been this day made to us, two of 
the justices of peace for the said county, by William D. Cobb, of 
Jones county, that two negro slaves belonging to him, named 
BEN (oommonly known by the name of Ben Fox) and RIGr- 
DON, have absented themselves from their said master's service, 
and are larking about in the counties of Lenoir and Jones, com- 
mitting acts of felony ; — these are, in the r.ame of the state, to 
command the said slaves forthwith to surrender themselves, and 
return home to their said master. And we do also hereby require 
the sheriff of said county of Len(»ir to make diligent search and 
pursuit after the above-mentioned slaves; and them having found, 
to apprehend and secure so that they may be conveyed to their 
said master, or otherwise discharged as the law directs. And the 
said sheriff is hereby empowered to raise and take with him such 
power of his county as he shall think fit for the apprehension of 
said slaves. And we do hereby, by virtue of an act of the Assem- 
bly of this state, concerning servants and slaves, intimate and de- 
clare, if the said slaves do not surrender themselves, and return 
home to their master immediately after the publication of these 
presents, that any person may kill and destroy said slaves by such 
means as he or they think fit. without accusation or irwpeachmcnt 
of any crime or offence for so doing, or without incurring any pen- 
alty or forfeiture thereby. 

" Given under our hands and seals, this 12th of November, 
1836. B. Coleman, J. P. [SealJ. 

Jas Jones, J. P." [Seal.] 

200 DOLLAES' EEWAED — Ean away from the subscriber, 
about three years ago, a certain negro man named Ben (com- 
monly known by the name of Ben Fox). Also one other negro, 
by the name of Eigdon, who ran away on the 8th of this month. 

I will give the reward of one hundred dollars for each of the 
above negroes, to be delivered to me or confined in the jail of ^ 
Lenoir or Jones county, or for the killing of them so that I can see j 
them. W. D. Cobb. 

November 12, 1836. | 

I 

I will only add in this connection, that these atrocious outrages 
were mostly perpetrated under the sanctions of American law ; 
and in no solitary instance have the perpetrators been brought j 
to condign punishment. Indeed, they are but the legitimate off- \ 
spring of the slave system, and are inseparable from it. And yet i 



71 - 

Prof. Stuart tells us that that system "may exist, and that, too, 
without violating the Christian faith;" and the Hon. Edward 
Everett (a church mumber), once, on the floor of Congress, vol- 
unteered military aid in its defence. " Sir," said he, addressing 
the speaker, "I am no soldier. My habits and education are 
very unmilitary. But there is no cause in which I would sooner 
buckle a knapsack on my back, and put a musket on my shoul- 
der, than that of putting down a servile insurrection at the South, 
* * * Domestic slavery is not, in my judgment, to be set 
down as an immoral or irreligious relation." 

I have now done with the proof which I intend to present in 
support of my first charge, and come to the second, which is, 
"That the Methodist Episcopal church is more corrupt than any 
house of ill-fame in the city of New York." To convince you of 
the truth of this charge will require no labored argument. The 
case needs but to be stated, to be fully proved. Those dens of 
infamy in New York, where the libertine resorts to satiate his 
depraved desires, are tenanted by women who devote ihemselves 
to purposes of prostitution. But are these abandoned charac- 
ters compelled to lives of infamy and crime ? Is there for them 
no escape from the paths of vice ? Can they not, on the other 
hand, change their course, and lead a virtuous life, whenever 
they choose to do so? But in the Methodist church there are 
50,000 women who are inevitably doomed to lives of prostitu- 
tion. AVith them there is no alternative. They are sold in the 
market for the domestic Seraglio, —they are the " Breeders " 
on the plantation, and are compelled, on pain of cruel scourging, 
and even death, to submit to their owners' wishes, whatever they 
may be ! And yet this church has assured us, through its high- 
est ecclesiastical tribunal, by a vote of 120 to 14, that it has " no 
WISH or INTENTION to interfere in their civil and j^olitical rela- 
tions ! " It woidd not place them in a situation where their vir- 
tue would be secure against the brutal marauder, if it could ! 
The church, as a body, sanctions, and great numbers of its mem- 
bers perpetrate on their slaves, the very crime which the laws 
of your state punish with death! 

My third charge is, " That the Southern ministers of the Meth- 
odist Episcopal church are desirous of perpetuating slavery, for 
the purpose of supplying themselves with concubines from among 
its hapless victims." From the nature of the case, the proof of 
this allegation must necessarily be circumstantial. But it is not, 
on that account, the less satisfactory; for men never act ~ but 
from motives ; and the actions are a sure index to the state of 
the heart. The tree is known by its fruit. In charging the 
Southern ministry with a desire to perpetuate slavery for the 



72 

purpose of supplying themselves with concubines, I do not assert 
that this is their only motive in supporting it, but that it is a 
motive ! 

Now, that these men are desirous of perpetuating slavery, 
there can be no manner of doubt ; for they tell us plainly that 
they have no ivish to see it abolished. They must, therefore, 
have some motive in wishing to perpetuate it. That motive, 
surely, cannot be a sincere desire to spread the knowledge of 
Jesus Christ, and the triumphs of his kingdom ; nor can it be 
love of wealth, — that master passion of the human breast, — for 
slavery is fast bankrupting the whole South. Nor is it found in 
their love of reputation, nor yet in their regard for the quietude 
of domestic life ; for these would both be greatly enhanced by 
the abolition of slavery. It is, doubtless, found in part, how- 
ever, in their love of power ; but is this their only inducement ? 
Is it from a desire of domination alone that they sustain a sys- 
tem which their founder denounced as the " sum of all villanies,^^ 
and which is fast filling the land with pauperism, ignorance, and 
crime? That surely cannot be. There is a stronger motive in 
this matter than the love of power; and that motive is revealed 
to us in the history of the private morals of our Northern clergy. 
If Northern ministers possess such strong predilections for adul- 
tery and concubinage, as the painful disclosures of the few past 
years force us to believe, hedged about as they are, on every 
side with the safeguards of virtue ; if they are often willing to 
hazard the loss of reputation, and even the disgrace and suffer- 
ings of incarceration in the state penitentiary, to gratify those 
predilections, — is it not natural to suppose, nay, is it not morally 
certain, that the Southern clergy, nursed as the}^ have been in 
the very hotbeds of pollution, would be anxious to perpetuate a 
system which affords them ample scope for indulgence, without 
danger, or even the fear of disgrace ? That such is the fact, is 
abundantly proved by the adoption, by the General Conference 
of 1840, of the resolution denying to persons of color "the right 
to testify against white persons, in cases of church discipline." 
Pending a motion to reconsider that infamous resolution, the 
strongest remonstrances were urged against it by Southern min- 
isters, who even went so far as to threaten a dissolution of the 
church, if the resolution should be rescinded. I must give you 
a specimen of their expostulations. They betray a sensitiveness 
and warmth of feeling, as you will perceive, which no other ques- 
tion has ever called forth. 

The Rev. William Winans, of Mississippi, said, — 

" He was never more deeply impressed with the solemnity of 
his situation — the act of this afternoon will determine the fate of 



73 

our beloved Zion * * * ^ If you wrest from us that resolu- 
tion, you stab us to the vitals ! * '* * * Repeal that resolu- 
tion, and you pass the Kubicon ! Dear as union is, sir, there are 
interests at stake in this question vv^hich are dearer than union ! 
Do not regard us as threatening * -s*- * * But what will be- 
come of our beloved Methodism ? The interests of Methodism 
throughout the whole South are at stake ! " 

The Rev. Mr. Collins, of , 



" Admonished the Conference, that the moment they rescinded 
that resolution, they passed the Rubicon. The fate of the connec- 
tion was sealed." 

The Rev. William Smith, of Virginia, 

"Agreed with the brother from Mississippi, that there were 
interests involved in this question dearer than union itself, how- 
ever dear that might be. Southerners are not prepared to com- 
mit their interests, much less their consciences, to the holy keep- 
ing of Northern men. Conscience was involved in this matter, 
and they could not be coerced " 

Whence, I ask, is this mortal fear of colored testimony ? Why 
do the clergy see in it a dagger, that will " stab them to the 
vitals '' ? What evil have they done, that they would sooner see 
the ''Union itself " dissolved than permit their sister, whom 
Christ has washed and cleansed in his own blood, to give utter- 
ance to her thoughts, in an assembly of his saints? AVhat mighty 
truth lies hidden in the bosom of the slave, that needs but to be 
revealed to explode the church — " determine the fate of our be- 
loved Zion" — and blast the rising "interests of Methodism 
throughout the whole South'' ? But one answer can be given to 
this question, and that answer abundantly confirms the truth of 
my charge. 

I come now to the last charge in the long catalogue of allega- 
tions which I have made against the American church and 
clergy. It is this — " That many of our clergy are guilty of enor- 
mities that would disgrace an Algerine pirate." And needs this 
allegation any further proof, after the appalling developments 
which I have already made? If so, I challenge a comparison 
between the conduct of many of the American clergy, and the 
Algerine pirates. Look on the darkest page of Moorish history, 
and tell me, has the Algerine ever sold his sister of the same 
. faith for a " Breeder " to " stock " the plantation of her haugh- 
ty proprietor with human cattle, perchance the offspring of his 
own body? Has he shipped his brother Algerine to a foreign 
realm, and sold him for a gallev-slave, to one of a religion dif- 
4 



74 

fering from his own ? Has he denied to a portion of his own 
countrymen the right to read the Koran (his Bible), and sold 
those countrymen into slavery to raise funds to send that same 
Koran to those who were ignorant of its contents in other lands ? 
Has he ever claimed the wife and daughters of his Mahometan 
brother as his property ? Has he robbed the frantic mother of her 
babe, and with the price of that babe's body and soul replenished 
his communion cup ? Nay, has he even compelled the heart- 
broken mother, if she observe the ordinances of her religion at 
all, to drink from that cup the wine which was purchased with 
her own child's blood ? Such enormities even the tongue of 
calumny dares not impute to the Algerine pirate, in a solitary 
instance. And yet they are the settled policy of no inconsid- 
erable portion of the American clergy ! They stain and darken 
ahnost every page of the modern history of the American church ; 
and if generally known, they would render that church a stench 
in the nostrils of the heathen of every realm on the globe ! 

My task is done. My pledge is redeemed. I have here drawn 
a true but painful picture of the American church and clergy. I 
have proved them to be a brotherhood of thif.ves ! 1 have 
shown that multitudes of them subsist by robbery and make 
THEFT their trade ! — that they plunder the cradle of its precious 
contents, and rob the youthful lover of his bride ! — that they 
steal " from principle," and teach their people that slavery " is 
not opposed to the will of God," but "is a merciful visita- 
tion " ! — that they excite the mob to deeds of violence, and ad- 
vocate Lynch law for the suppression of the sacred right of 
speech! — I have shown that they sell their own sisters in the 
church for the Seraglio, and invest the proceeds of their sales 
in Bibles for the heathen ! — that they rob the forlorn and de- 
spairing mother of her babe, and barter away that babe to the 
vintner for wine for the Lord's supper ! I have shown that 
nearly all of them legalize slavery, with all its barbarous, bitter, 
burning: wrongs, and make Piracy lawful and honorable com- 
merce ; and that they dignify slave-holding, and render it pop- 
ular, by placing Man-stealers in the Presidential chair ! I 
have shown that those who themselves abstain from these enor- 
mities, are in church fellowship with those who perpetrate them ; 
and that, by this connection, they countenance the wrong, and 
strengthen the hands of the oppressor ! I have shown that while 
with their lips they profess to believe that Liberty is God's free 
and impartial gift to all, and that it is " inalienable,'''' they hold 
2,500,000 of their own countrymen in the most abject bondage; 
thus proving to the world, that they are not Infidels merely, but 
blank Atheists — disbelievers in the existence of a God who will 



75 

hold them accountable for their actions ! These allegations are 
all supported by evidence which none can controvert, and which 
no impartial mind can doubt. The truth of them is seen on 
every page of our country''s history ; and it is deeply felt by 
more than two millions of our enchained countrymen, who now 
demand their plundered rights at their hands. In making this 
heart-rending and appalling disclosure of their hypocrisy and 
crimes, I have spoken Avith great plainness, and at times with 
great severity ; but it is the severity, of truth and love. I have 
said that only which I could not in kindness withhold ! and in 
discharging the painful duty which devolved upon me in this 
regard, I have had but a single object in view — the redemption 
of the oppressor from his guilt, and the oppressed from his chains. 
To this darling object of my heart, this letter is now dedicated. 
As it goes out through you, to the public, a voice of terrible 
warning and admonition to the guilty oppressor, but of conso- 
lation, as I trust, to the despairing slave, I only ask for it, that 
it may be received with the same kindness, and read with the 
same candor, in which it has been written. 

With great respect and affection. 

Your sincere friend, 

S. S. FOSTER. 
Canterbury, N. H., July, 1843. 





























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